Public Art Review issue 05 - 1991 (spring/summer)

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Design Proposal for courtyard benches and interior ceramic wall reliefs by Cliff Garten for Brainerd (Minnesota) Community College; project to be completed by September 1991.

Photo by Ric Sferra.

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Editorial Board: Amanda Degener, board chair; Kinji Akagawa, Jack Becker, Don Belton, Cathy Billian, Fuller Cowles, Regina Flanagan , Kathleen James, Patrice Clark Koelsch, Cheryl Miller, Lance Necker, Christine Podas-Larson.

Advisory Committee: Neal Cuthbert, Mariann Johnson, Lori Lane, Richard Richter, Rebecca Sterner, Gordon Thomas.

• with key issues and dialogue on public art • about projects bringing art to the public consciousness

Published by FORECAST Public Artworks Executive Director: John M. Walley Development Director: Jennifer Casey

Each issue concentrates on a key area of art in public places. Articles by experts in their fields explore the latest in techniques, accomplishments, and theories. Illustrations and photographs explain new concepts and the finished art.

FORECAST Board of Directors: Fuller Cowles, President; Jennifer Casey, Vice President; Scott M. Nelson, Secretary; Ellen Valde, Treasurer; Amanda Degener, Lindsay Fairfield, Diane Katsiaficas, Lori Lane, Pixie Martin, Mary Sullivan Rickey.

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ABOUT THIS ISSUE

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PUBLIC HDT IH HISTODIC PLHCfS

fditor"s Hote

J

oining a publication in midstream is always an exciting, if uncertain, proposition for an editor. So much is contingent on those who' ve come before or are in place when you arrive - past editors and writers, former and current board members, the organizational staff.

I've been lucky with this, my first issue as editor of Public Art Review.

I could use this space to personally thank everyone who helped in the transition, but at the least I feel I should mention former editor Cheryl Miller, who put it all in motion well before I arrived, and could have then just simply faded away. Instead, she joined the editorial board and since has spent numerous afternoons on the phone keeping those things she started on track while helping me sort out everything else. The board - a few old friends and many new faces - has been accessible and thoughtful in its suggestions. And project director and managing editor Julie Marckelwho's almost as new to PAR as I am - has been an indispensable collaborator in virtually all aspects of the planning and production of this Public Art in Historic Places issue.

There've been some slight changes in PAR, designed to widen the audience and provide a sense of continuity for a magazine that, with only two publication dates each year, is by its very nature discontinuous. But no matter how much we hope to develop a sense of structural uniformity, we know that there's a kind of breadth and variability in the subject matter that just doesn't seem to lend itself to neat organization and definition. This, I think, is to our advantage.

Public art is unique in its interactive quality, and not just interaction among artists, but among a broad "public" spectrum of individuals, sometimes unfamiliar with each other's way of doing things - sponsors, administrators, politicians, engineers, architects, historians, custodians, community members. This makes for dizzying choices in potential coverage, and affords the opportunity to get numerous different and often disparate perspectives - not just the familiar critic-object/event/policy dialogueon the aesthetic, cultural, and political issues surrounding public art.

It should come as no surprise that the concept of "public art" seems to grow more slippery with each passing year and completed project. The characteristic which differentiates the form - its public quality - is increasingly being forced to redefine itself,just as conventional definitions of specific public constituencies are evolving. The most vital contemporary public art reflects the contemporary public, a shifting, constantly expanding set of boundaries, marked by a growing awareness in individuals that difference can no longer be peddled as justification for indifference.

One of the greatest miscalculations in traditional conceptions of the "public," and of public art, has been a tendency toward exclusion rather than inclusion. Today's public art doesn't have to stop at the familiar corporate plaza sculptures and bus stop make-overs any more than contemporary notions of society should stop with conventional hierarchies and historical constructions.

Guest editor Kathleen Coakley has developed her section with this in mind. The articles she has gathered focus on projects that are often as formally refreshing as they are historically revelatory; artists using new tools and approaches to get at marginalized, hidden pasts or to put an alternative spin on familiar histories. Likewise, the other feature topics including an interview with a leading preservationist of American folk art environments, a look at the administrative challenges in programming public art in a setting both very classical and very urban, and the first in a new series of forums which will invite response and participation - seek to open up new avenues of dialogue and to further identify the many lessvisible constituencies involved with public art.

The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce proposed over a half-century ago that "criticism of history consists in recognizing whether an historical narrative is full or empty, that is, whether or not it has at its heart a motive that links it up with the seriousness of life as it is lived." I believe such a yardstick applies equally to our current discussions of public art, if not of all artistic endeavor. Public Art Review's Historic Places issue seems an ideal opportunity to explore the degree to which public art in historic settings, and public art in general, links up with "life as it is lived": how, like history, it must concern itself with a broad range of different interests and concerns, how it confronts and presents the collective past which binds us and builds our lives as individuals and as the public, and how it looks to the future that we create for those yet to come.

Jeffrey Kastner Editor, Public Art Review

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EIIflJIIII OOIomrStmm: 11I11W1IIJCABT1IUIEW

by John M. Walley

HI

elcome to Issue 5 (Vol. 3, No. 1) of Public Art Review, with its special focus on Historic Places. Guest Edi tor Kathleen Coak ley, director of Cleveland's Committee for Public Art, has assembled a remarkable overview of perspectives on the controversial topic of integrating contemporary art forms within past-oriented contexts of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban planning.

Welcome as well to our new focus, which addresses the particular interests and concerns of individual members of those broadly-based groups that often bave the opportunHy [0 promote the inclusion of public art through their professions and personal lives.

We've identi ned fi ve groups with a stake in public art whose members need to talk and collaborate nati onall y and 10caJly to bring publ ic art (and aesthetic programming) to the desi gn of public places. These grou ps are: arti sts and their organi zations; design professionals and firms; public officials, administrators, and agencies; community activists and organizations; and educators and their institutions.

Individuals from tbese groups wHl create the local coalitions calling for tbe inclusion of art in public and private development projects. They will ask for the aesthetic fusion of community values, histories and cultures within the objects, forms and spaces created by artist'>, architeot'), landscape architects, and engineers in our public places.

Public: A rt Review is now being revised to focus on two major arenas in eaoh issue.

The magazine will have a center section on a particular theme developed by a guest editor, as in this issue. The surrounding, or front and back seotions, Will feature a variety of informative-reviews, essays, letterS to the editor, and guest columns designed to speak. specificaUy to the particular concerns of the aforementioned five groups. Our goal is to make these features attractive ehough to dtaw even those individuals who profess no interest in the special theme ofilie issue. It may take us a little while to meet our high expectaLions, but we will do our best as quickly as possible.

For those who like a Uttle more philosophical j usti fication for stakin~ sucb a bigQ position on the quicksands of public life, we offer the following. It is the mission of Public Art Review to estab lish and sustain dialogue among these fi ve ~oups atthe two levels of art criticism and project planning, progtamn'ling and desigp. This is PAR's contribution to "thinking globally and acting locally."

Through critical analysis of the spectrum of activi~ies the idea public art is ~ better understood and accepted by those in a position to see its economic, politicatand oultural benefits. By stimulating the ooopt;ration ofthe~e groups at th~ lOGa~ le~el Public Art Review will play an expanding role in the 100a] integration of artistic and aesthetic issues in the development of public and private pLaces. . _ We ask for your comments and recommendations on obr new foros~we grow through your participation. Please write and let uS know what you think.

of

Want to

Hi,'

Thank you for the excellent article in your Fall/winter 1990 issue on our public art project comF\lemoratiflg Biddy Mason in downtown Los Angeles. I am writing to correct an oversight in the way our project WaS described, one I've noticed in much ofthe coverage of collaborative and inter-disciplinary projects. As these projects become more common, and the subject for increasing analysis, it is important that the extremely complicated process by whIch they come about be recognized.

In the case of our Biddy Mason project, several individuals beyond the core artisVdesigner/historian team were crucial to the project's success. Michelle Isenberg, of Isenberg and Associates, became an important addition to the project team on top of her role as art consultant to the Broadway Spring Cenler developers on their Original percent for art project. Michelle helped to create a productive working relationship between the develo~rs and our non-profit, The Power of Place, which originateq and raised funds for the project, and she was an important advocate for the artistsl vision at crttical st~es in the construction process. Robert Chattel, formerly of the Los Angeles Community Redevelopment Agency, also deserves recognition for his tireless wori<. as a champion for the project and intermediary ~n our small organization and a large municipal bureaucracy.

We will all gain a much greater understanding of the public art process if we widen our scope of reporting and analysis to include those who play such vital behind-thescenes roles.

Thank you very much.

Donna Graves Executive Director, The Power of Place UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning Los Angeles

4 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991

PUBLIC RBI fOBUM The first in a series of interviews conducted by Cheryl Miller

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ith this issue, Public Art Review begins a series of interviews with artists, designers, sponsors, and representatives of various art publics. These interviews are conceived as aforum on the processes by which public art comes into being. They are meant to inform students and professionals on developments in a rapidly evolving field, and to assist in articulating a common language for public art's various constituencies. All expenditures from the public purse are controversial, but those for public art are often exacerbated by a lack of appreciation of practical and philosophical ¡considerations that are unique to art in the public sphere. We are seeking a vigorous exchange of ideas and invite your comments on the substance and direction of these conversations.

To initiate the series, we asked two artists to describe how they gather and use public input in designing public artworks, and how they view their role in educating or engaging a community in such works. Elyn Zimmerman is a sculptor who has completed major outdoor projects at the National Geographic Society in Washington, D.C.; at Chicago's O'Hare Airport; for the Art in Public Places program in Dade County, Fla.; and at Moffitt Cancer Research Center in Tampa, Fla. She is currently working on projects in San Francisco and Birmingham, Ala. She lives in New York City.

Brad Goldberg is an artist and landscape designer whose most recent outdoor projects include works at the Dallas Arboretum and Botanical Society; the Dallas Symphony Center; the Lippincott Center in New Jersey; and the International Sculpture Symposium in Burlington, Vt.. Mr. Goldberg has works in progress in St. Paul, Minn., Phoenix, Ariz., and Hamamatsu, Japan. He lives in Dallas.

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Chery I Miller

Public Art Review: What kinds of information do you seek in creating public works, and how do you get this information? What kinds of interaction with the public do you find useful during the conceptual stage?

Elyn Zimmerman: When someone contacts me about doing a project, certain information about the site and the planned uses is already provided. I look this over and then ask more questions. Who is going to use the site, and when? How many people, how many children? What is the history of the site? Was there any event here that should be honored? What exists in the immediate surroundings? Are there parks, other public art, museums? I ask myself, "What can I add to the community?" Then I look at the budget, making sure there is enough money for good quality work and for maintenance.

If it's a private commission, I find out who the owners are, look around and see what they have done before. I get this information by calling the chamber of commerce, the historical society, the library, and by asking questions of the city agencies about their role. I ask what the mayor thinks about the project. What do people at the museum think? Is this the community'S first project? Who initiated it? Why is it being done now? You can usually tell if there is a positive consensus about a project. I also want to know how they got to me and if the art advisor has experience. These are legitimate questions for an artist to ask a sponsor and they help me decide if a project is right for me. These are the sorts of questions any artist should ask before agreeing to do a project.

In terms of public interaction, each project is different. In a percentage-for-art hospital project in Tampa, I talked to people in the hospital, on the maintenance crew, students, and others. People on the jury represented different constituencies. On another project, for a private developer in

San Francisco, there were a lot of givens and very stringent laws on designing public spaces, like how many linear feet of seating per square feet of open space is required. We had to go to eight or 10 public meetings where not many people showed up and then to a meeting before the mayor and city council where hundreds of people were present. These meetings are a process of refinement.

They say "we like this but not this," or "this design satisfies certain conditions but that one doesn't."

P.A.R.: What do you do with all of this information when you're actually designing a piece ?

E.Z.: I listen to what people have to say, but I consider myself a professional.

At some point, I have to take all this information, let it settle in my mind, and then forget about it. I try to put everything away when I'm thinking about making a place expressive or creating an environment. I'm not listening to the community, I'm not listening to the laws, I'm not listening to anything . They are there in the back of my mind, but if they were directing me, the client could just skip me and do it themselves. I think it is important to have community input, but I don't think it is the only important thing.

Making art is a creative, partly unconscious process. An artist brings a different sensibility to a project than an architect or urban designer. Not better, but different. Trying to throw everyone in the same hat undermines the artist's power to do something unusual or expressive or strange. I think that it is the jury's responsibility to find the right artist for the right situation and to set the conditions for an artwork. Within those conditions, an artist should do what she or he believes in. An artist's work shouldn't be about pleasing everybody but about provoking them in a creative way. Art is an individual expression, and because it is the expression of an individual, it is not about consensus. It's really about freedom of expression. I have been told that doing public art is immoral because, traditionally, art has been such a solitary, hermetic expression.

To put it in the public arena you have to compromise it in many ways so that it's not art anymore. Although that's not an attitude I subscribe to, I keep it in mind.

P.A.R.: What do you think is the role of the artist and of the sponsor in helping the public to accept and comprehend an artwork?

E.Z.: The responsibility of explaining art to the public should not rest with the artist entirely; that is too much weight.

The burden for placating the community should not fall to the artist either. An artist can become the lightning rod for a lot of hostility that people feel toward a city, or of hostility among groups. I think that whoever is running the art program has much more knowledge and a deeper understanding of a community. Therefore they should prepare both the community and the artist. If a city wants a public art program, the arts administrator or people on the city council should go out and explain to the community why this is important for the community, why that money is not being spent on more police or something else. Not after the fact, but before the fact. IfI were a city, and I had made an investment in public art, I'd promote it. Why not have a docent to take people to see pieces in other parts of the city? Also, museums have been very standoffish about public art. Most of them have no programs to help explain public art. Museums could have slideshows and lectures.

I don't engage the public after a project is completed but I do like to go anonymously to a place I've designed and watch what people do and say, and see if I learn something for the next time.

How do people interact with the space?

Did I put the seats too high? I look at the quality of concrete work. Can I do better than that? I look at all spaces with a critical eye and think about how can I incorporate successful aspects into new projects. For example, the space in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is a monumental staircase that is covered with people all the time. Mimes perform in front of it. People sell food and flowers. It's a wonderful people place.

An artist needs to be filing away that kind of information all the time.

P.A.R.: What kinds of information about a community do you lookfor, and how much do you interact with the public during the design phase?

Brad Goldberg: My interest in doing public artworks is to derive the work from the place. Every artist has an orientation, but what is driving my work is a desire to go to a situation and respond strictly to the impulses created by it. I try not to bring a lot of baggage from past projects. This means, of course, that I need a lot of information. In developing a proposal, I can't take for granted information that is sent by the client. Usually, the agency packages some information on history, program, and why they are doing this project.

Don't take this at face value. Cities sometimes have the most limited viewpoint. From the information you're sent, you might be able to produce something that is bold and engaging, but it won't necessarily reflect the context. If you don't go to the site, what can you learn? The artist has to visit the site on a number of occasions, at different times of day or of the year, to find out who uses the space, or what it is missing. What was it before I came along? Was it something to respect or something that has not been respected and must be created anew? Go talk to the different agencies, citizen groups, property owners, and other interested people.

Artists, on their own, should contact these people. It's important to let people know that you're really interested in them.

Many times, the client takes out an insurance policy by asking three or more artists to submit design proposals. Even if an artist is brought in for a day, that doesn't give that person a chance to really get immersed in a community, or a chance to look in detail at the local context as a catalyst for ideas. I'm advocating a process in which a client commits to an artist before the design proposal is submitted. Clients should clearly articulate what they are looking for. I was asked very specific questions about community involvement for a project I am doing in St. Paul, questions like "What experience did I have with collaboration?" and "What did I feel about working with community groups?"

Clients should look at an artist's work and say, "This person is good because they have a process. They know how to gather information, and, based on past projects, they know how to come up with something that works."

Better yet, an advisory committee that has representatives of all the groups or users should help select the artist, and then plot a strategy on how to get the public involved. There should be communication with the public at all stages. If there is not a formal group, the selected artist should plot a strategy. I know artists who go door to door and

say, "Hi, I'm an artist working on a project in your neighborhood. What do you think about this thing?" You start taking the political pulse of a place. Hold workshops. Get together the cast of players (the city, agency, neighborhood groups, landowner , developer, art organizations, and others) and have everyone put their agenda on the table.

You'll run into competing intere t groups that may have nothing to do with you, and that can be difficult for the arti t to sort out. The democratic process breaks down a lot. But it is much preferable to saying, "Here is a site, here i a project, bring us a design." When you come back with a design, people automatically react negatively , even if it is the most terrific design in the world. "We weren't asked," they say. "That isn't what we wanted! " A lot of artworks don ' t get built because of a lack of attention to the community. Process is almost more important than the product. The product can take many forms and still be successful, but without the process, you really don't have the support of the people who will use it. People might not necessarily like what something looks like, but if you have dealt with their concerns in a logical way, they will support it because they felt they made a contribution.

P.A.R.: How do you work with the information that you've gathered on a community?

B.G.: It's good to document everything that you've learned. I make lists and paste them on a wall. Sometimes as you start creating something, you get blinders on. You focus on something you might be interested in as an artist, and you start forgetting things. Public art projects have a reasonable complexity. You build up layers of information, and you need to keep referring to that information. You have to be somewhat objective, and honestly ask yourself if you're responding to things. You might have been working for a month on a design, and then realize that you'd forgot about an important issue, like flexible use. All the information on the wall will help test whether you're really solving the needs that are present there.

P.A.R.: When a work is being constructed or installed, do you continue to interact with the community? What is most useful?

B.G.: Doing a lecture is really important to make people aware of your attitudes. I think artists working on-site is one of the most terrific ideas in the world and I do a lot of that. Seeing an artist at the site, investing care into it, is one of the best things that the community can see. When sculptures just arrive on the truck, shrouded until the big event, there is no sharing in the creation, no sense of where it came from, why it is what it is. People take a lot of pride in something that they're involved in, rather than in something that is just given to them. Half of what we' re talking about here is developing a sense of community pride.

Artists can be a great vehicle for that.

It is important for the artist to work with the sponsoring agency and educate them on the maintenance of an artwork.

Too often, once a project is complete and the artist's contract has expired, alterations are made for one reason or another. The artist should be consulted about modifications so that the integrity of a piece is not dimini shed.

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HOTES FHOM THE UHDEHGHOUHD Art in the Moscow metro

by Cynthia Abramson gaunt, elongated head, cut with

rays of primary color is I explosive splashed across record jackets and T-shirts designed by artist Yuri Rodin for the internationally renowned Soviet rock band Zvuki Mu. A series of Rodin's watercolors, created as illustrations for a book of poetry by film star Piotr Mamanov, is scheduled for publication in the USSR some time this year. Up until roughly 10 years ago, artists like Rodin would have risked imprisonment or worse for presenting their artistic vi ion to the public, and their sole audience would have existed within the "underground." Today, Yuri Rodin's largest audience can still be found underground, enjoying his mosaic designs for the Savyolovskaya metro station in north-central Moscow.

Soviet artists are enjoying more artistic freedom under glasnost than they have during the past 50 years. Nowhere is this more evident than in the public artworks they are creating for new stations in the Moscow metro. In this, the city's largest and most frequented public space, Soviet artists are celebrating their collective, creative spirit and are communicating the reality of glasnost to the Soviet people.

The Serpuhovskaya metro route is a veritable timeline for the evolution of Soviet subway art. From the hand-carved marble benches, crystal chandeliers, and ornate tile mosaics created by architect Deineka for the Novokuznetskaya station in 1943, to the unadorned, colonnaded columns, recessed lighting, and abstract marble mosaic created by the design team of Rodin-Shumakov-Rodin for the Savyolovskaya station in 1989, passengers are exposed to 45 years of Soviet art history in the space of a IS-minute subway ride.

Built in the early 1930s as a "People' Palace" and decorated with hundreds of thousand of square meters of marble, Moscow's metro tation are monuments to historical figures and significant events. The artworks in the earliest of its 145 stations are icons of Soviet strength and self-reliance: bronze gun-wielding soldiers, valiant peasants, tireless factory laborers, and fearless pioneers of both sexes. "The early tations erved as propaganda for tourists, showing them as well as [the Soviet] citizenry, the wealth

and abundance of the USSR," explains Dr. Alexander Rappaport, chairman of the Department of Architectural Education at the Scientific Research Institute for the Theory and History of Architecture in Moscow. He believes that these stations, as well as those built in the late 1940s, served to instill the ideology of the revolution in the minds of the Soviet people, and continue to remind citizens of their role in society and of the obedience that is required of them.

In contrast, metro stations built during the past 10 years are characterized by a mix of simplified architectural design and whimsical or non-political sculpture and wall decor. The 10 stations created by architect Nikolai Shumakov during the latter part of his 14 years with the metro are indicative of this trend. For example, his Konkova, Yacenova, and Butsevsky Park stations are elegant spaces, though their design focus is primarily functional. Their homage to the legacy of earlier designers extends only to their modestly vaulted ceilings, marble walls, and flooring.

Contemporary metro artworks, such as Borganov's "Suburban Moscow Fauna" lit Konkova Station, and Nikolaev's ceramic murals for Borovitskaya, are lighthearted. Their goal is to lighten, rather than to dramatically uplift passengers' spirits. Both artists juxtapose archetypical themes with purely whimsical elements. Borganov places a modestly-sized, quasi-historic figure on horseback next to an enormous vertical hand on which a butterfly " innocently alights. Nikolaev creates a golden, shining Kremlin out of brick at one end of the Borovitskaya station, and then playfully hides childlike etched images of flowers, horses, and houses in individual ceramic tiles on every one of the station' s arches for waiting passengers to discover.

Another new development in the Moscow metro is that artworks are no longer sited solely underground, but can be found in increasing numbers outside of stations in small paved entrance plazas designed by architects for their display.

These plazas, which often include seating and plantings, seemed to be among the only examples of landscape architecture in Moscow. Markets frequently spring up in these spaces and are often the largest center of commercial activity in rural neighborhoods.

Soviet subway artists and architects work together in design teams chosen by the architects. These teams collaborate on most aspects of station design including plans for lighting, materials for artworks, and sites for art. Architect Nikolai Shumakov includes artists in discussions pertaining to the design of sanitation and drainage facilities as well.

These teams are frequently successful in integrating art and architecture because architects no longer design metro stations to function as exhibition halls, and artists do not create artworks as stand-alone pieces. "The art is ambient," explains Yuri Rodin. "It is there if you want to look at it." He created his

6 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991

abstract mosaics for Savyolovskaya from blocks of white marble the same size and color as those of the surrounding wall, integrating the mosaics into the station's overall architectural design.

Only artists who are listed on the official roster of the Union of Artists are eligible for subway commissions.

According to Rodin, membership in the Union of Artists is composed primarily of older artists. Artists on the list can and often do choose other, younger artists to work with as collaborators. In addition, knowing who draws up the new list each year can help an artist get on it. This made it possible for Shumakov to work with Rodin, whom he selected because of their long friendship and what Shumakov describes as a shared artistic vision and sensibility. Shumakov is collaborating with Rodin and his twin brother Victor on the design of the Proletarskaya station, which will be completed in 1993.

The design teams for each station develop a proposal for the art as well as the architecture, which they present for approval to the Moscow Combinat for Monumental and Decorative Art, the Metro art commissioning body. Metro art projects are funded both by Combinat and the Russian Art Fund, which provide artists with materials, studios, and work space. Combinat uses 60 percent of the art budget to pay for costs and materials, leaving 40 percent to the artists, out of which they must pay fabrication costs and salaries for technical assistance, as well as for their own time. Artists install their own work. As the average cost of a station is 1 million to 4 million rubles,* with 100,000 to 200,000 rubles set aside for each art project, metro art budgets can constitute as much as 5 percent of the station construction budget. However, artists' salaries are based on a per-station rate, and total only 5,000 to 8,000 rubles.

Even though equipment and materials are often hard to obtain, the time between initial station design with artistic conceptualization and station completion including the installation of artworks, is a remarkable one to two years. By way of comparison, American subway stations, particularly those that include art, often take six to 10 years to complete.

Klikov's "Eros" outside the Tyoplystan metro station.

Other changes are taking place in the Metro. Stations named to honor such heroes as the first director of the KGB are being renamed. The country's mounting financial difficulties are causing Metrostroi ( the Moscow transit authority) to reconsider approving the commissioning of art, and to consider allowing advertisements in the metro as a means of generating revenue. Public sentiment is running counter to financial outlays for artworks as well.

Rappaport says that the greatest need now is for cooperative shops that sell food, clothing, and water in the metro.

Combinat, along with the Metro Institute of Architecture (which trains architects to work solely for the metro), continue to defend the inclusion of artworks in the system. According to Rappaport, this is due to a widespread desire among politicians and Musco-

vites alike to keep Moscow the artistic and architectural capital of the USSR. New metro stations open every year, and many more are in the planning stages - last August, Shumakov alone was designing six new stations, all of which were to include works of art. In light of recent developments in the Soviet Union, however, there is reason to doubt whether these projects will be realized, and whether current trends in Soviet metro art will continue. Of lasting significance, however, is the fact that Soviet artists and architects have accomplished what they have and, in so doing, have begun the release of contemporary Soviet art from its exile underground .

* The official exchange rate is six rubles to the dollar. On the black market, however, one dollar fetches between 14 and 20 rubles.

Cynthia Abramson lived in Moscow during August 1990, as part of a three-month independent research! study tour of subway art programs in London, Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, Moscow, Leningrad, and Stockholm. The study was conducted as part of her self-designed Master's Degree in arts management and urban planning at New York University.

Preseruation on the margin

by Elaine Wintman hile Simon Rodia's towers in Los Angeles' Watts neighborhood may be the most famous folk art environment in the United States, the great majority of the sites are hidden jewels: bottle houses, underground gardens, miniature replicas of towns, whirligig yards, religious grottos. Contemporary folk art environments are handmade places built by self-taught artists; owing less allegiance to conventional art traditions and more to personal and cultural experiences, the sites generally contain accumulated or recycled objects, are attached to the artist's home or business, have developed without formal plans, and are monumental in scale or in number of components. Most artists say they're not motivated by a desire for notoriety or financial gain. Questioned at the age of 90, folk-artist John Giudici said, "I just do it ... Some people like to go to bars and drink. I like to play with cement."

III

Incorporated in 1978, Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments (SPACES) is a national non-profit arts organization concerned with identifying, documenting, and preserving large-scale folk art environments in the United States. SPACES has sought recognition for the artists and the genre since its inception, and has been engaged in ongoing national identification, documentation, and exhibition programs. The organization has gathered an extensive library and archive of information on individual sites and artists including oral histories, photographs, maps, and information on state and local preservation organizations. SPACES has created survey forms and bibliographies, produced newsletters which highlight sites and transmit original research, and started and/or assisted local preservation groups.

The term "contemporary folk art environment" was coined by SPACES as a non-judgmental and useful way of describing a widespread and diverse artistic phenomenon. Among the group's accomplishments are its initiation of successful nominations of 10 contemporary folk art environments to the status of California state landmarks, and its assistance in gaining national landmark status for three of the eight folk art sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Recently, I spoke with Seymour Rosen, SPACES' founding director, about some successful preservation efforts currently under way, achieved in significant measure through the long-term work of SPACES and through Rosen 's continuous and profound commitment.

EW: Seymour, you have always said that both simple maintenance and community acknowledgement are important in trying to preserve an environment.

SR: Physical maintenance is necessary to ensure the site's longevity. There also are ways of integrating the sculpture into the neighborhood, getting acknowledgement for it, and being prepared to counter those who might want to destroy the work. In many neighborhoods, any deviance from whatever "normal" is - a polka-dotted house if most houses are striped is frowned upon. An environment is normally quite noticeable. However, if there is some kind of widespread public notoriety, if the neighbors see some interest from prestigious sources, it's easier for the community to accept. Sometimes the family and/or community adopts the site and helps to preserve it.

EW: What do you do when someone refers to the artist as this "crazy lady" or to the work as "a bunch of junk"?

SR: You fight back. You can counter the negative statements by suggesting that people like John Chamberlain and Kurt Schwitters created assemblage from what others thought was junk. You can talk about similar work in other neighborhoods and in museums. You can suggest that the actual look of the thing is perhaps not quite as important as the spirit behind the doing of it. It all depends upon the artist, the person you're trying to convince, and what the work actually looks like. The most important thing is establishing credibility for the artists and the site.

EW: Will you talk about John Medica's site?

Photos by Seymour Rosen (courtesy SPACES)

[John Medica's "Castles and Garden," a four-and-a-half acre site in Santa Rosa, Calif., consists of rock formations - miniature castles, arches, walkways, planters, bridges, and meandering pathways. SPACES was instrumental in getting California Historic Landmark status for this site.]

SR: We believe John Medica's site will retain most of its integrity. We have heard, and this may be true, that the site is being preserved in part because of its state historic designation. State historic designation doesn't totally protect the site, but it's a kind of recognition people respect.

EW: You have been in contact with John and his family for more than a decade. I know that you tried to encourage him to develop a plan for the site's preservation.

8 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991

SR: One method of preservation is to transfer eventual ownership of a property to a non-profit group, the owner retaining all rights while he/she is alive. But John was fearful of losing title to the land, and of possible health problems, and he was afraid he wouldn't have the ability to liquidate this asset. Upon his death, ownership of the land reverted to his wife's family [John's wife had preceded him in death, and the Medicas had no children]. The land is being sold to a developer. And if you're a developer, the best use of a piece of valuable land is to level everything on it and start fresh.

Fortunately, the potential developer hasn't suggested that - possibly because of the historic designation or perhaps even because he's a really great person and sensitive to the idea.

EW: I understand this developer is respecting the integrity of the work and is planning to use fences John Medica built as boundary lines between the lots.

SR: There are still some problems, including whether the people who are purchasing individual lots are interested in perpetually maintaining the site. There are some unbelievable plant specimens - cactus and succulents - but there is a considerable amount of gardening work involved. There's a plan to give the site to the city of Santa Rosa, but it's not clear the city is interested because there's already a multi-acre park nearby. Still, so far, so good.

EW: You've also got some good news about John Giudici's site. ["Capedro," John Giudici's site in Menlo Park, Calif., is a series of concrete walls niches, and arches embedded with ' pebbles, shells, small statues, and toys. In the mid-1970s SPACES included this site in an exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modem Art - the first acknowledgement of John's work in a museum context - and later gained state landmark status for the site.]

SR: John Giudici died a number of years ago; his daughter died in 1989. The family is all grown up, they have their own homes. In any case, the house, built in the '30s, is a little small for most people these days. The land, meanwhile, has appreciated a great deal. At one point, the property was in escrow; fortunately, that sale fell through because of disputed boundary lines. Then Michael, John's grandson, got very serious about some kind of preservation.

Michael, with the help of SPACES, attempted to give the site to Stanford University, which couldn't accept a gift of that scale or complexity, and was concerned both about maintenance and legal responsibility. We, however, did find an art collector with considerable land who is very interested in moving "Capedro" to his property. Michael is meeting with this collector to try to work out the complex problems involved with the 60-mile move, and we hope within six months to have encouraging news.

EW: Isn't it problematic to move the sites? And even more problematic to view pieces of the work out of context? Isn't the whole point that these environments function outside of the art marketplace and aren' t art objects?

SR: Unless you literally cut a piece off ofthe Watts Towers, you can't really tum the site into an object or a commodity. The power of the environments is enhanced by the totality of it, and SPACES has a history of trying to preserve these sites in situ - where they were made. Sometimes, however, it's a question of either moving a site or seeing it destroyed, and upon occasion we have moved parts of an environment. For example, in 1988, SPACES helped the John Ehn family move "Old Trapper's Lodge" from the Hollywood/ Burbank: airport area to the campus of Pierce College in Woodland Hills, just north of Los Angeles.

EW: In general, individual pieces don't seem to have the same resonance outside of the contexts in which they were made.

SR: That's true. In rare instances, however, individual pieces can work outside the site. There are some 90 artifacts from the John Ehn site which the artist had always exhibited separately from the main garden area. The Ehn family has asked us to place these pieces in public institutions around the country. There is interest from a variety of places including the Smithsonian Institution, the Oakland Museum and The John Michael Kohler Art Ce~ter in Sheboygan, Wis. EW: There are a number of groups around the country which were set up to save individual sites. In Houston, the Orange Show Foundation acquired Jeff McKissack's monument to the wonders of the orange, restored it, and made it into a center for community activities.

In California, the Art Beal Foundation and the Preserve Bottle Village Committee keep Art Beal and Tressa Pisbrey's dreams alive. The Kohler Foundation of Wisconsin purchased three environmental art sites (Fred Smith's "Concrete Park," Paul and Matilda Wegner's "Grotto," and the "Painted Forest"), restored them, and gave them back to the community for public use. SPACES encourages individuals at the local level to accept responsibility for specific sites. How does SPACES help?

SR: SPACES has developed lists of things to do and information to gather [see sidebar]. SPACES also consults, advises, and acts as a clearinghouse for information. I'd like to discourage phone calls to SPACES that sound like this: "Could you set up a group to save this thing for us? Oh, and could you raise the money for us, too?" Another one of my personal favorites is: "The bulldozers are at the other end of the block. Could you do something?" At the 11th hour, no matter how romantic it sounds, we have found no magic way to do instant preservation. But we certainly want to help.

Elaine Wintman is a fund raiser at California Institute of the Arts and former assistant director of SPACES. She fell in love with Elis F. Stenman's "Paper House" in Pigeon Cove, Mass., decades before meeting Seymour Rosen, and believes that most people have long-term relationships with extraordinary homemade places.

OH PDESEDUATIOH: WHAT YOU SHOULD KHOW The foUowing basic information should be gathered When preparing to save a site. SPACES is available to answer specific questions, to support your activities and help plan the experience of saving an important bit of Americana.

as a tourist destination and/or enhance the quality of the life of the community?

Is there/will there be a person, group of people, or organization willing to do the above? Can the artist or his/her family assist in preservation efforts?

1. Status of the artist: Is the anist old, ill, or dead? Is there a person responsible

5. Written documentation of the site: Is

for the artist <Namelrelationladdress)? In ,the case of poor health} does the artist nave any family, children, resources, or insurance? 1f {lOt, who pan you identify ~to look after him/her? If the person is 'hospitalized or dies, who can be responsible to look after himlher?

2. Ownership of the property: Has the artist ex.pressed a desire to save the site, or his/her works? Does the artist own the property? Does the anist want to sell the property? If not, who does? Are they willing to sell/rent it? If so, for how much? Who can secure the property?

Are there no relatives, or do the relatives want to sell the property? Is the area being developed'?

3. Description of tbe site and the art~'s work: Is this a physical place with art or is the place the piece? What is the condition of the site? Does saving the anifacts in situ enhance their artistic value? Can the artifacts be moved, repaired, andlorrestored? Does it matter if they are moved? Is there an inventor)' of artifacts and physical property or ' papers? Who has other examples of the artist's work? Has the work been purchased, loaned, donated or is it on consignment?

4. Preservation needs: What is the local attitude toward the site? Is there local interest in the artist!site? What win it take to preserve the site/artifacts? How long will these steps preserve the site?

What are the major threats to the site?

What will happen if it is saved on-site! off-site? Is there a place to move it to (coUege. museum, some other place in town)? Could the site eventually serve

there any substantive documentation? Is there a bibliography? ]s there a list of exhibitions or other notable events?

Where? Is it available? Are there personal papers or a history of the artist and the site?

6. Future transfer of the property: Will the artist transfer ownership to a nonprofit public entity to accomplish preservation? Is there a will? Will he/she change/write a legal document to that effect? If so, what restrictions are necessary? Does he/she want to live on the site until death? Will the transfer of ownership not be complete until that time? Does the artist need some money now?

7. Expenses and funding: Do you know of potential funding sources and volunteers at the local, state, or national levels?

Can the site be made self-supporting?

What are the yearly taxes? What other current expenses exist?

GAINING RECOGNITION FOR THE SITE - STATE AND LOCAL LEVEL Achieving recognition for an artist and his/her site should first be accomplished at the state or local level. While each state has its own criteria for statewide recognition, some individual states have various status levels. Write the state historic preservation office at your state capitol for specific details.

NATIONAL REGISTER CRITERIA Listing a folk art environment on the National Register of Historic Places is no guarantee that the site will be preserved

continued on page 25

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THE ADT OF gJ~OiPE(2t gJa~k The challenges of placing and maintaining contemporary work in aclassic urban setting

by Mariella Bisson

rospect Park in Brooklyn is a remarkable setting for contemporary artists: a space considered by many , to be the masterpiece of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, turn-ofthe-century landscape architects whose most famous works include Central Park in Manhattan and Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Their plan for a 526-acre man-made "natural" environment features wooded areas, open meadows, and a 60-acre lake dug by hand in the I 86Os. Visitors to the park today see spectacular trees planted 120 years ago, newly restored buildings, bridges, and new plantings carefully designed to blend into the landscape. Nearly 5 million visits are made to the park each year for rest, recreation, and, in increasing numbers, for cultural programs.

The non-profit Prospect Park Alliance and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (through the Prospect Park Administrator's Office) co-sponsor the Visual Art Program. I began the program in 1983 to bring contemporary art into this historic setting. I saw an opportunity for a wide audience made up of the general public to be moved and excited by contemporary culture. Today the series reaches 40,000 people who visit our two unusual indoor galleries, the monumental Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza, and the elegant terra-cotta Boathouse.

The outdoor program reach more than 100,000 people with the Sculpture Walk, artist's residencies, and Artists Day. Memorial Arch is a magnificent Civil War monument (John Duncan, 1892) with permanent neo-Roman bronze statuary by Frederick MacMonnies. Two bronze panel by William O'Donovan and Thomas Eakins depict Lincoln and

Grant, sad and exhausted, leaving the battlefield. In 1911, zealous Brooklynites petitioned for the removal of these works, claiming that they were not "heroic" enough. This attempt at censorship failed and the panels are on view today, the only public sculpture by Eakins in New York City and a vivid " reminder of the clash that occurred when humanist realism overthrew neo-classical ideals.

The monument itself was closed to the public from the time it was built until the Administrator's Office restoration of 1981. Now I invite sculptors to build sitespecific works in the arch each spring and fall. The interior spaces are extraordinary: A vaulted 22-foot-high lobby leads to two curving iron stairways; on the next level, a single spiral staircase begins its ascent past landings and a 16foot-wide niche. At the top floor, a chamber called the Trophy Room (originally designated as exhibition space for Civil War memorabilia) spans 44 feet from one side of the arch to the other.

These exhibitions have featured a great variety of creative solutions to the challenges presented by the space.

Sculptor Scot Pfaffman carved a wood configuration of shapes in the lobby working on-site using a chain saw. The niche has been addressed in different ways: Linda Peer's "Pile of Heads" was a ghostly ceramic heap of human heads on a bed of sand. Lucia Minervini, in a later show, covered the curving walls overhead with a stenciled list of American civil rights heroes. Nancy Steinson used the entire tairwell in an installation of welded steel pieces responding to the geometry of the site. On the next landing, artists have used the

10 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER

space as a room, for example, Jorge Luis Rodriguez's installation on the theme of the "Madonnas of Fresh and Salt Water," or Carole Byard's "Lullaby for Soweto" for which she suspended dozens of burlap "babies" from the ceiling.

The Trophy Room calls for heroic efforts. When Mel Edwards showed 26 of his "Lynch Fragment Series," reliefs made of steel and objects such as chain, barbed wire, and spikes, visitors asked the security guards if the room had been a Civil War torture chamber. Sal Romano 's 36-foot-Iong pool with floating elements had a hypnotic effect on the audience, Boaz Vaadia's bluestone installation weighed more than two tons and was carried to the top in fragments by unemployed weightlifters recruited from the local gymnasium, and Mark Gibian worked for a year to create his graceful abstraction of glass melted over a metal skeleton.

When the Boathouse opened in 1985 following an extensive restoration, Prospect Park introduced a new setting for art. The terra-cotta pavilion of 1905 is modeled on Sansovino's library in Venice and is sited on the shore of the Lullwater, a man-made canal that meanders through the landscape. Tall trees surround the area and a rushing waterfall fills the lagoon. From April to November, the building serves as the Park Visitor Center where art exhibitions, an information center, the Urban Park Rangers Headquarters, a cafe, and pedal boat rentals combine to attract 25,000 people each season. I organize two shows each year for the Boathouse and design the annual Sculpture Walk to begin and end there. It would be hard to imagine a more beautiful setting for a program dedicated to art and nature.

The sunlit portico gallery has a patterned brick floor and a high vaulted ceiling made of Guastavino tiles. The classicism of the space is complemented by contemporary art. Joe Chirchirillo's one-man show populated the space with life-sized figures of people, birds, and "man-beast combinations." The audience drawn from the surrounding communities is composed largely of black, Hispanic, and Asian visitors who are delighted to see art presented in a free and welcoming setting. In a show called The Live Ones : Artists and Animals, Ed Rath's complex paintings were well received by Caribbean visitors who responded to the vibrancy in his color sense and the interplay of geometry and abstraction. A site-specific approach has also been successful here, with

Carol Sun's paintings made to fit cleverly into the half-circle shapes above the inner french doorways. This year, Arthur Fornari's solo installation using holograms is bound to incite curiosity and comment.

In some cases, the energy and cultural traditions of park visitors have actually shaped the program. There is a place near the Boathouse where Afro-Caribbean drummers gather each Sunday to celebrate the music and rhythms of the African diaspora. One of these drummers is Deenps Bazile, a native of Haiti. In 1985, unbeknownst to me, he chose a tree stump in that area and started carving a series of faces in its roots. This anonymous "spirit stump" fascinated me and I repeatedly made efforts to find its creator. After several months of leaving messages at the sculpture, Bazile telephoned. He was worried that the Parks Department was trying to prosecute him for having defaced park property. Having this talented and spiritual person arrested was the last tlring we intended - he was featured in the exhibition Branches and is our current nominee for an artist in residence grant.

I organized our first outdoor sculpture program in 1987 beginning an annual series of sculpture walks. Site-specific works are arranged along an assigned route to form a path of visual experiences with art and the designed landscape. It is also with these works that the vulnerability of some of the outdoor work became apparent. Tom Bills and Deborah Masters both made pieces of cast concrete in the first year. Bills' piece was a tall abstract form sited across the water from the Boathouse. Masters positioned her three "Pond Virgins" so that they seemed to be admiring the view or watching their own reflections in the lagoon. The delicate figures stood unharmed from April until a June high school graduation night, when a prepschool gang destroyed two of them.

A piece that sought to channel such vandalistic impulses was Jim Swank's "Only Time will Bring the Night," a wooden structure with alexan-sealed chamber where panes of glass can be seen. Four battering rams protrude from the work and are designed to be slammed into the panes of glass inside the sculpture, Swank's theory was that if visitors can interact with the work and have a moment of sanctioned violence with it, they will be less likely to harm it.

Unfortunately, the glass was hard to break and the frustration that visitors felt may have caused them to graffiti the piece more readily. At the moment, it awaits removal , having been blowtorched. Such destruction can also be read as a mirror of the times, as Florence Neal's beautiful "Wind Vane," which had been standing since 1987 on the shore of the Lullwater, was wrecked on the night that war broke out in the

Persian Gulf.

Park administrator Tupper Thomas refuses to let the art program bow to defeat on the vandalism issue. The herculean task of rebuilding the entire park has been fraught with difficulties, but she remains undaunted and, with her support, the outdoor sculpture program has continued its public service. Several other departments and offices have gotten involved in helping to present the sculptures. The park's anti-graffiti crew has learned how to work on sculpture.

The City Parks Department boom truck drivers and fork-lift operators saved the day when Mark Rabinowitz installed "Meditations on Sleep," two tall castconcrete figurative works weighing a ton apiece, on the granite terraces in front of the Boathouse.

One of the most ambitious outdoor works is "A Rope of Sand," a totem pole

by Doug Hopkins. The site was suggested by members of the forestry crew who had been assigned to remove a dead pin oak tree next to the Picnic House, our performing arts facility. The 25-foot-tall tree was ideal for carving. The MidAtlantic States Arts Foundation provided grant funding for Hopkins to come from Bloomsburg, Pa., to work at the site. His dedication to the project kept him in the park to complete the piece long after the grant was done. The totem pole is a group of images of fish and a goddess figure carved, then painted. This is a work that has never been vandalized.

When creating their outdoor works, sculptors must deal with factors that are not about art, but are essential to the success of their pieces. Siting is especially sensitive in this historic landscape where important views cannot be disrupted. The topography offers a great deal of variety: meadows, wooded

clearings, the shoreline, even the water itself, but respect for the original vision of Olmsted and Vaux must prevail.

In 1991, Tim Watkins will anchor a set of "clamshells" made of satellite dishes that will house fountains in the Lullwater. Robert Ressler will work with park landscape architect Rex Wasserman to choose sites for his carved wooden benches. Ilona Granet's sign-works mimic official information (and make some officials rather nervous) with their provocatively subversive written messages and visual images. Randy Herman will be carving a limestone block over a period of time in a nearby sycamore grove. I believe that watching an artist at work during the course of several weeks helps the public to understand that art-making is work, and dispels the myth that it is an effortless process.

The public has a chance each year to interact with painters and sculptors throughout the park on Artists Day. This special event brings more than 50 participants into the park to practice their art form, whatever it may be, for a day.

The only regulation is that all works must be removed at the end of the event.

Artists Day takes place in August, while the rest of the art world is sleeping.

Perhaps the dearth of worthwhile art activity in the city helps make this such a popular event - or maybe it's the cool shade of the trees. Some artists paint and draw on-site. Last year, Sara Pasti and Valerie Savili painted scenes of the lake.

An Ngoc Pham made a book of his landscape images. Rose Valado created an evocative installation by placing hundreds of white votive candles in the stream and the shadowy recesses of Nethermead Arches. Jane Goldberg made a piece out of white balloons engaging a

dozen volunteers to help inflate them and tie them in the shape of a star. David Fasoldt placed a bleached pig skull into a crevice of a dead tree, a dramatic and mysterious sight. Sylvia Benitez made a wire ball and then wove a surface of reeds through the wire. She then floated the green grassy ball on beds of water lilies in the Lullwater. A map helped visitors find their way to the artists and encouraged them to ask questions. The question artists heard most was one that surprised them: Can I help?

The visual art program in Prospect Park has grown over the last eight years and has brought contemporary art to a new and interested audience. According to park administrator Thomas, "The cooperation between the Administrator's Office and Prospect Park Alliance has brought the program into existence and despite the current climate of funding shortages, we are committed to its continuation." As Olmsted said in 1866, "All of the art of a park and the art that is done in a park is to influence the minds of men through their imaginations."

(Today we are not quite so constrained - we also influence the minds of women and children.) Still, Olmsted 's words ring true here in Brooklyn, in a park with a unique balance of old and new, a contemporary energy in a classicallydesigned space - mutually beneficial, not mutually exclusive.

Several other departments and offices have gotten involved ... The park's antigraffiti crew has learned how to work on sculpture.

The City Parks Department boom truck drivers and forklift operators saved the day when Mark Rabinowitz installed "Meditations on Sleep," two tall cast concrete figurative works weighing a ton apiece, on the granite terraces in front of the Boathouse.

Mariella Bisson is a consultant to the Prospect Park Alliance and a visual artist.

PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991 11

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accommodated these desires.

The articles gathered for this special issue are about projects I'm personally t's odd that this issue's topic seems such a paradox: Are we talking about interested in - done by people I respect, with artists whose attitudes are public art in historic places or public art VS. historic places? Talk public art sympathetic, and yet open and questioning. I admire these undertakings and to m~s,t pre~e~vationi~ts, and thei~ enthusiasm isn't overwhelming. Per- wish I'd been involved with all of them. I'm an administrator - hats off to the ] haps It s therr ImpressIOn that pubhc art has staked out an adversarial role, professionals who crafted open-ended projects, made the room for artists to and preservationists have enough adversaries already without looking for interpret, and encourage layers; to the juries who selected the artists, or in one more. case, to the artist who stepped forward to take on a lifetime's work; and to the From an artist's view, "historic district" and "preservation" have negative artists who resisted the urge to "finish" and "clean up" history. connotations - places that ooze nostalgia, or cry cheap imitation while trying Charleston, S.c., is one of the country's most historic places with texture and to create a past that never was. Why would either side want the other? Because patina that conveys volumes. Historic preservation efforts have been successhistory is an excellent entree for public art. HistQiiistliOOretitcalrrv,aoc.-uffactS:"ru[ailcmrurJlSii1i1sTh1rniill . The arts flourish, especially during the and in popular perception is deemed more art has had no place in the celebration until a lUXUry than art. A number of rich with some 20 installations challenging, opportunity and crafted projects for artists its history. One can't imagine permanent contexts that history provides. In this venue, hard to imagine what these approvals took. the past to influence both the present and the the memories of Charlestonians and visitors History has shifted focus, too - it's no Inn ........"" about footnotes. The big events have been tM,dc.UrAn too, but the outlying area around the metro wait to shade our understanding. This new COIl4C1~lif,fi ",~:h.4'l~."".. , design comes under close study and where stories haven't been told, is more accteS!I},PJl_1Il0 <.;arC:mJl }I<!t'uU'U5' Here, designers were asked to dig deep wrongs. What is being commemorated today P;~tt(~ili~l~JleJ~!WU1. paved over and bears little relation to the site mous people who worked hard to build our This history is open to interpretation, with when talking of historic districts might isn't conclusive. It isn't one person's opinion, tlOl~t(le~lt.d~aJ WI1~~~III1I;;Iajb'~ .pn,lU~l¥""N.r·~J The collection of public art already well sanctioned view. It dClesn 't spring from a mdl~~va;1ti'iLm~n ¢ileQr.!tte,s the industry that built the city. Artists of very no unions, no wealthy descendants are that a formulaic approach is avoided and guarantees. Is it this risk that attracts the experience. Cleveland's Hidden City Reto this work? as well as the major events that shape the If the team approach is valuable in most public art projects, it's an absolute development of a city, starting with the basic premise that the city is never necessity in a historic area. No artist needs to become a historian, though many fmished, but an ever-changing system. Historians have been at work here for do relish the investigation and research required. Experts like archaeologists, a long time, but it takes artists to make history tangible.

It's inspiring yet a little disheartening to realize that the projects of the botanists, historians, and archivists can greatly inform the work. This kind of collaboration is not for every artist, however, especially when one considers the British public art organization Common Ground could only come from sensitivity and patience needed to get a project through all the heightened England. Aside from our lack of woods, there is a character in Common Ground's efforts that to us might seem foreign and of another time. Subtle and scrutiny and extra levels of approval.

Working in historic settings often leads to two special interests - develop- sensitive, their efforts draw more from individual people than from an amorers and preservationists. Sometimes public art can mediate. In Cleveland, phous "public." Programs encourage people and artists to intervene on behalf historic preservation efforts are not much further along than those of public art, of the places that are theirs and seek "alternatives to the spread of uniformity so historic areas aren't "off limits." These efforts can create partnerships to throughout Britain."

The most dramatic example of layering is at St. Arlthony Mission in Zuni work cooperatively toward a common goal. In other cities the territory already has been staked out - or purchased. The urge to develop or redevelop Pueblo, N.M., where the ancient culture of the Zuni preceded the 17th-century generally leads to cleaning up, fmishing, "completing" history, and marketing Franciscan missionaries. The two religions and cultures peacefully coexist in the church with Alex Seyotewa's paintings of kachinas, reinforcing the old it all. The result is the destruction of any authenticity.

We, as the public, are smart: We know when we're being fooled. We want beliefs and ensuring their continuation for future Zuni generations.

These projects respect the past; they seek not to change it but to add to our clues, not answers, a kind of public art that explains visually and not through the printed word. We want to encourage artists to uncover what was there, and understanding. At the Viaduct Gateway dedication in Cleveland, Mel Ziegler's toast "to incomplete history" celebrated fragmentation and the gaps in the story let history reveal itself.

For my work with the Committee for Public Art, history was our entree. It's left for us to interpret. Artists help us do that. With "incomplete history" we all easier sell than art. Good timing helped - a resurgence of pride in modern- encourage the future. day Cleveland and how it got there meant that local funding was available for these kinds of efforts, and for beautification as well. Our agenda for public art Kathleen Coakley is director of the Committee for Public Art in Cleveland, Ohio.

PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991 13

HISTORIC PLACES

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t was the evening of Jan. 27, 1983, and the Citizens Advisory Board for Community Development Block Grant Funds was meeting. Under consideration was the city manager's request that funds be allocated for part of the cost of a sculpture to be installed in downtown Lowell. In the Smith-Baker Center, six men sat on folding chairs at a cafeteria table - the audience numbered about 20 persons seated facing a maquette in the front of the room.

Pointing at the model , one board member asked,"Who brought that thing before us?" Another member said, "It looks like two lobsters, fighting." On the other side, an advocate spoke of the sculpture as "symbolic of Lowell's past and future."

Despite the board 's recommendation against funding the project, the city council approved the expenditure.

Sculptor Mico Kaufman developed the model into a work consisting of five life-sized bronze female figures entwined. The piece is a tribute to womankind, especially the women who constituted the initial work force in Lowell's textile mills . The arti t had been invited by then-U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas, a Lowell resident, to propose the first piece of what has become the Lowell Public Art Collection. At once bitterly attacked and blindly promoted, the work has since been adopted as a city symbol, appearing on posters and in travel guidebooks.

At the dedication ceremony for the women's sculpture in 1984, Sen. Tsongas said, "Great cultures are remembered for their art." To his credit, and to the amazement of many, T ongas didn't stop at one culpture. Sure of the educative, restorative and inspirational powers of art, Tsongas envisioned a sculpture collection that would be a cultural re ource and a point of community pride. He obtained commitments for funding from individuals, corporations, and public agencie in order build thecollection.

He wa so committed to the idea that he and his wife Niki commissioned Dimitri Hadzi to create a work in memory of their parents. Hadzi's "agapetime" (" love and honor") was dedicated in October 1981 . Some I 0 years after the daring beginning, the city has eight pieces in place, two more in progress, and another handful in the proposal stage.

Historic Preservation magazine recently hailed Lowell

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14 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

as the "premier rehabilitation model for gritty cities worldwide." The astonishing revitalization of Lowell was an intemational rags-to-riches story in the mid-1980s. Lowell's economy had declined for decades as the city lost its manufacturing base of textiles through the middle of the century. Beginning in thl( late 1970s, Lowell surged back on the strength of computer sales, innovative development strategies, and an ethnic, industrial museum-without-walls which attracted more than 500,000 visitors a year with its mill and canal tours, folklife festivals, and history exhibits.

Of course the media that wrote glowingly of the "New Lowell" is back now that the recession has ripped through the optimism that came with the Massachusetts Miracle, as the '80s boom was named.

Yet the buoyant days of the revival provide the context for the start of Lowell's public art program. A sense of cultural renaissance had pervaded the community ever since the idea of recycling its heritage in the form of an urban cultural park took hold. Moreover, the notion of Lowell as an urban laboratory had been ingrained in enough planners, public administrators, and cultural activists that their first impulse was to say "Yes" instead of "No" when an exciting idea was proposed. As the early engineers had devised new water-power and production methods, so the contemporary planners envisioned ways to reshape the contours of the city's economy and culture.

The Lowell Public Art Collection is distinguished by its thematic coherence. The works are not only encountered in the historic district of the Lowell national and state parks, which commemorate the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in America, but the pieces are also visual commentaries on the issues arising from the themes of the urban park: labor, machines, power, capital, and the industrial city. Lowell's huge red-brick textile mills, 19th-

Carlos Dorrien's "Human Construction," 1989. (photo: Kevin Harkins)

,

century commercial buildings, worker housing, churches, and 5.6-mile canal system form the core of the historic district.

The artworks have been integrated into small parks, plazas, public spaces, and structures, forming a linear collection loosely following the Canal way, a path along the downtown loop of the canal system. A new phase of the public art program calls for works to be developed on the outer reaches of the canal system, which is fed by the Merrimack River. Michael Singer and Jody Pinto currently have proposals under consideration.

A good example of the Lowell collection is Robert Cumming's new work, "The Lowell Sculptures," installed in the summer of 1990. Sited around the perimeter' of Boarding House Park downtown, the work is a series of simple forms based on Lowell symbols which have been combined in a modular design. "I was looking for shapes that would represent Lowell and cities of the American Industrial Revolution. Using very recognizable elements seemed to make sense in a public project," says Cumming.

One of the shapes he settled on was a thread spool, similar to a beehive form that he has used in past work.

Rounding off the spool made the form less like a spool and more a general shape that could be a beehive, an early American symbol for industry. The stairs, seats, and humanscale forms make Cumming's work a user-friendly piece especially popular with students from the McDonough Arts Magnet School across the street. And it's not unusual to see a park ranger using the massive steel-plated granite silhouette of Francis Cabot Lowell, for whom the city is named, as part of his or her interpretive spiel for visitors.

One of the challenges of working within a historic district such as Lowell's is that artworks are scrutinized like any other physical addition or alteration in the zone and are subject to the same preservation standards. The Lowell Historic Board, a city agency, enforces strict preservation standards in order to protect the city's nationally significant architecture and help knit old structures and new construction into a harmonious setting. Working with the Lowell Public Art Collection Committee, composed of arts administrators, artists, and planners from Lowell and beyond, the Historic Board reviews proposed designs, meets with artists, and issues permits for installation of new works in the historic district.

Preservationist views about the art were seen in a recent

plan produced by the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, an agency working with the National Park Service on the development of the Lowell Park: "Siting of new public art should respect the historic setting of the industrial artifacts and have no tendency to overwhelm. Generally, the new art should ... help defme a sense of place at many locations along the canal system."

Guided by public art consultant Patricia Fuller, the Lowell Public Art Collection Committee in 1988 adopted a new approach in commissioning artists which has helped alleviate problems that arise when artists are asked to create a work for an existing site or one fully developed in design drawings. The question for the artists, says Fuller, is "Can you see Lowell in a new way?" The current process gives artists six to eight months to develop conceptual proposals based on their explorations and research in the city. Once the artist's idea is accepted, he or she then joins the plarming effort for the site involved. The artist's contribution is integral.

At the same time, the public art committee began to manage the selection of artists on behalf of the various sponsors who had made commitments to Tsongas. This , was a change from the open calls and direct commissions that had yielded the first six artists. The public art program has been administered for the past five years by Rosemary Noon, director of the Lowell Office of Cultural Affairs. "A successful combination of the artist's vision and the community's engagement can result in an outstanding work of art," says Noon.

This approach received the strong endorsement of the National Endowment for the Arts when, in 1989, the NEA awarded Lowell the second-largest grant for public art in the agency's history, for projects by Cumming, Suzarme Hellmuth and Jock Reynolds, and David Ireland. These artists were the flfSt to propose works after a lengthy planning stage. Previously, artists had been asked to respond to sites and themes established in advance.

"I appreciated the flexibility of the process," says Cumming. "The artist was required to spend time in Lowell, which was a good idea in that you don't get somebody sitting in his studio and cooking something up.

The result is a work that is more empathetic than it would be otherwise."

As Jock Reynolds says, "If you pay attention to a community, it begins to reveal itself. Lowell has a high ingenuity level. Its people are inventive. You can learn a lot about a city by hanging around its hardware stores."

Suzanne Hellmuth, his artistic collaborator, found a pattern book from one of the textile corporations which they are using to design fabrics and furnishings for an interior work they are creating in connection with the Park Service.

Hellmuth and Reynolds have little by little stretched the boundaries of their "site" to the point that they and Park Service architects are reshaping the courtyard and accessway that lead to the focus of their project, a room in a former residence of textile company managers.

One of the boldest initiatives in the public art program was the move to establish a memorial to author Jack Kerouac, a Lowell native best known for his literary classic On the Road, which chronicled the Beat subculture in postWorld War II America. A controversial and highly influential modem artist, Kerouac was under-recognized in his hometown. Momentum had been building since his death in 1969 to take some action, and in 1986 the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission voted to establish "The Jack Kerouac Commemorative."

In keeping with the thematic unity of the public art collection, the "Kerouac Commemorative," designed by Ben Woitena of Texas and Brown & Rowe Landscape Architects of Boston, emphasizes Kerouac's roots and Lowell novels. The portrait in language includes eight triangular columns of carnelian granite inscribed with excerpts from 10 Kerouac books. The heartening aspect of this project was the extensive support throughout the community. The Commemorative was dedicated in June 1988, with a week-long celebration, including poetry readings by old Kerouac friends Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

An alternative form of commemoration can be seen at one of Lowell's oldest mill complexes, the Boott Cotton

AsJock Reynolds says, "Ifyou . pay attention to a community, it begins to reveal itself. Lowell has a high ingenuity level. Its people are inventive. You can learn a lot about a city by hanging around its hardware stores."

Mills. A team of volunteers is working with David Ireland to transform a 19th-century power house called The Generator Room into a stabilized environment whose scale, volume, and light suggest an industrial chapel. "This is fertile ground for me to plant my interest," says Ireland.

A recent television documentary about dinosaur hunters in China explained that "it can take a team of scientists 15,000 hours to dig out a dinosaur." Another kind of excavation is under way in the depths of the Boott. More than 70 persons on the G-Room team have logged about 3,000 hours since May 1990, cleaning and scraping and urethane-ing the brick walls, concrete ceiling, skylights, steel trusses, and animal-like machinery in the three-story room. The University of Lowell Art Department has signed onto the project and offered a public art seminar on site for three semesters running. More than any other urban archeology project, this signiftes how far the thinking about public art has advanced in a decade.

Importantly, "The Generator Room" has provoked discussion about the preservation of historic interiors. For the most part, Lowell preservationists have been concerned with exteriors and building facades. This project offers a creative alternative to standard interior treatments achieved through sandblasting and dry-walling. Ireland has pushed the impulse to preserve to a higher level.

Public art in Lowell has engendered dialogue, selfexamination, celebration, alliances, and more. The collection is part of the daily experience of everyone who lives, works, visits, or attends school in the historic district. From the gleaming steel cubes of Michio Ihara's "Pawtucket Prism" to the massive stone arches of Carlos Dorrien's sculpture to the witty found object called "The Big Wheel," the collection appeals to a range of tastes.

In acity whose motto is "Art is the Handmaid of Human Good," artists now work alongside planners and preservationists in conceiving new physical designs and public actions. Lowell residents know that their community is in the midst of a historic transformation based on historic preservation and cultural conservation that has the potential of being as revolutionary as its model industrial system. The next area of investigation is public art education, a logical step now that the collection has a 'certain weight.

In 10 years, the community has enriched itself in ways that promise to have far-reaching effects. Its vigorous culture, layered with the elements of ethnic and occupational traditions, is being recharged through artistic work in the public realm.

Paul Marion, a free-lance writer and cultural affairs consultant, is a member of the Lowell Public Art Collection Committee.

The Lowell Public Art Collection: Lowell, Mass.

Mico Kaufman, Homage to Women, 1984, bronze on granite base; Market Mills Park.

Sponsors: Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, Lowell National Historical Park, City of Lowell, and Lawrence Ansin.

Ivan and Elliot Schwartz, The Worker, 1985, bronze and granite; Lowell Heritage State Park Plaza.

Sponsor: Lowell Heritage State Park.

The 8ig Wheel, 1986, wood and steel drive pulley from textile mill; Lowell Heritage State Park Plaza.

Sponsor: Lowell Heritage State Park.

Mlchio Ihara, Pawtucket Prism, 1987, stainless and plated steel; Lower Locks Plaza.

Sponsors: Arthur Robbins and Lowell Inn Associates, Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, and City of Lowell.

Ben Woitena and Brown & Rowe Landscape Architects, The Jack Kerouac Commemorative, 1988, granite and stainless steel; Eastern Canal Park.

Sponsors: Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, Lowell Heritage State Park, and City of Lowell.

Carlos Dorrien, Human Construction, 1989, granite; Pawtucket Canal, Lower Locks Plaza.

Sponsors: Courier Corporation, MIA Com, Raytheon Company, Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, The Lowell Plan, Inc., Massachusetts Arts Lottery through Lowell Arts Council, and Lowell Office of Cultural Affairs.

Robert Cumming, The Lowell Sculptures - One, Two and Three, 1990, granite, brick, and steel; Boarding House Park.

Sponsors: National Endowment for the Arts, Shawmut Arlington Trust Company, Lowell Office of Cultural Affairs, and Lowell Historic Preservation Commission.

Dimitri Hadzi, agapetime, 1990, bronze; Lower Locks Plaza.

Sponsors: Paul and Nicola Tsongas.

David Ireland and the G¡Room Team, The Generator Room, in progress, transformation of 19th-20ttH:entury textile mill power house; The Boott Cotton Mills.

Sponsors: National Endowment for the Arts, Congress Group Properties, Lowell Office of Cultural Affairs, and Lowell National Historical Park.

Suzanne Hellmuth and Jock Reynolds, The Agents' House, in progress, renovation of kitchen, vault room, and courtyard of 19thcentury residence of textile corporation managers; Kirk Street.

Sponsors: National Endowment for the Arts, Lowell National Historical Park, Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Lowell Office of Cultural Affairs.

Common Ground: Places, People, Meanings eHcerpted from apaper deliuered by Sue Clifford in London, february 1990 With cities, it is as with dreams: everything imaginable can be dreamed, but even the most unexpected dream is a rebus that conceals a desire or, its reverse, a fear, Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else. , . Cities also believe they are the work of the mind, or of chance, but neither the one nor the other suffices to hold up their walls. You take delight not in a city's seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours. Or the question it asks you . ..

HISTORIC PLACES ~

- !talo Calvino Invisible Cities

ities are not set in stone. We begin with a paradox, for it is important that we see the city and its parts as an open work not only unfinished but also to be appreciated through many suggestive journeyings; no simple orchestration is possible, no "correct" definition exists, no modem map can capture [it). Cities are not simply bundles of architecture, feats of history, sociological salads, economic engines, tourist destinations, or development opportunities. The most satisfying aspects of the city inflame curiosity, provoke interpretation, [and] feed our imagination and humanity. Already we are talking about places and about people.

Places are never satisfactorily described only in terms of location, of elements, or of the sum of their parts; objective analysis and rational appreciation restrict and impoverish beyond a certain point, for the questions "whose used artists, sculptors, poets, cartoonists, playwrights, place?" and "whose city?" come pressing in. and writers to indicate "new ways oflooking at the world" Places have meaning to people. They are rich in layers by illustrating the "richness of the commonplace and the of possibility. If their structures are rigidly preordained, if C a r s o n value of the everyday." Theirs is the "down-your-way" history is obliterated, if there is no room for mystery, no b y J 0 h n school ofecology./fsomeone can be encouraged to take an provocation to interact, no pause in the daily reiteration of am never sure whether to describe Common Ground interest in the tree at the end of their street, then they just patterns, our places starve us and make unwelcome the as an art organization demons~rating concern ab.out might come round to 'thinking about tropical rainforests. lodging of memories. Places make sensuous, emotional the environment or as an environmental organiza- While the predominantly rural scope of Common Ground demands on people. tion demonstrating the power of art. In any case, gives a certain style and coherence to what they do, it also In our quest for the new it should not be beyond our wit both definitions are only part of the picture. Com- sometimes results in a sort of overall feeling of nice to sympathetically respond to the particularities of the mon Ground is an extraordinary mixture of art, natural country comfort. And the friendliness of their program place, to listen to the knowledge and needs oflocal people, history, social history, landscape appreciation, conserva- sometimes results in lack of bite: By avoiding the city and to retrieve the soul as well as to create anew subtle, tion, ecology, science, philosophy,folklore, literature, and sewers, general urban decay, or toxic industrial waste- interesting places that have the ability to enrich, to haunt, popular cultural action. Emphasis shifts from project to lands, some of the more ugly and drastically difficult to awaken: places with meaning. project, but the combination of elements always has an effects of environmental irresponsibility are ignored.

If we accept that places rich in meaning have the intrinsic and vital artistic contribution. From 1983 to 1991 Since 1983 Common Ground has produced books, capacity to lift our spirits and challenge our perceptions, Common Ground has consistently come up with inspired traveling exhibitions, theme shows, participatory projects, can we then build on an assumption that things that reveal schemes in which artists have imaginatively highlighted site-specific sculptures, sculpted seatsfor the forest trails, and transform, which encourage us to sense and ponder conservational and ecological concerns in non-didactic posters, and postcards, almost always providing informa- invisible presences, that guide the imagination in new ways- winning opinion by charm, ingenuity, and aesthetic tion and ideasfor actionfor those concerned enough about directions, and provoke poetic meanderings may help us to appeal - and wherever possible prompting people to the issues raised (e.g., the disappearance of Britain's confront our deeper feelings, to value them, and perhaps to participation and action. orchards, the neglect and abuse of trees, despoliation of act upon them.

Given the worth ofthe Green politics it espouses and the landscape, eradication of local distinctiveness). Common The arts do have this power. Sculpture, music, film, "leafy lane" nature of much of its subject matter, there is Ground attempts to awaken individual and community poetry, painting, performance, and pageant can stop us in happily a pragmatism at the heart ofthe organization that interest to celebrate and conserve what is crucial and our tracks, make strange the familiar, dematerialize our prevents it from lapsing into romanticism or nostalgia. precious within the local environment in the hope of expectations, prejudices and usual responses to places, and Where others might incline towards sentimentality or generating further interest in related national and global can make us rethink. Provoking our imagination, bringing airiness, Common Ground eschews the esoteric infavor of perspectives. This tracing ofpersonal, local, and national into focus a separate reality, the arts can evoke feelings and effective communication of ideas and information. Per- histories can help people maintain a sense of identity and add them to language. We need art, for as Bachelard has haps more consistently than any other British public art meaning within a contemporary existence where the indig- said" Art, then, is an increase of life, a sort of competition organization, Common Ground uses art as a functional enous is being obliterated by the homogenization of the of surprises that stimulates our consciousness and keeps us tool to create in people an analytical awareness of their globe by mega transport routes, super agri-strips, and from becoming somnolent." everyday living circumstances, as well as encouraging identical international shopping mallsfull ofchain stores. individual and community action. The work ofother public Environmental and ecological concern necessitates a NEW MILESTONES art agencies in Britain might be correctly characterized as range oftactics at all levels. Common Ground realizes the Common Ground's New Milestones Project is encourbeing concerned with grand personal artistic statements capability of art to enlighten. As much as we need the aging a new generation of sculptures. It hopes to stimulate lending themselves to corporate plaza prestige, competi- aggressive shock tactics of activist organizations such as the creation of small-scale works of the imagination that tive artistic circuses such as garden festivals, biennials or Greenpeace, we also need the gentle, educative, and express our sense of history, our love of place and of the triennials, or challenging audiences with confounding artistic approach of Common Ground. natural world. The project is involving local people in contextual interventions such as artists' using advertising commissioning sculptures that will be valued and enduring space or making dramatic site-specific installations. Com- John Carson is production director with the Artangel features in the present and future life of the community. mon Ground, on the other hand, takes a more low-key and Trust, a production and promotions organization based Rarely is attention paid to the commonplace and familcommon-sense approach, concerned not to risk alienating in London, working with visual artists and others who iar aspects of our local surroundings. Such aspects are any of its audience. wish to operate in a context of social or political inter- often overlooked or taken for granted but have great Within thematic projects the organization has variollsly vention with temporary works in public locations.

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LONDON

RH IHTHODU[TIOH TO [OHHOH GHOUHD

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16 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991

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emotional value and meaning for the people who know Common Ground and local people raised money from them well. By recognizing and sharing their feelings about European Year of the Environment, South West Arts, the their place, it is hoped that people will find new ways to county, district, and town councils, the local residents take an active part in caring for their locality. association, and individuals. ARC (Southern) has given Sculptors and craftspeople work closely with the local the stone and many local companies have helped with community to decide the theme and location; interpreta- machinery. Commitment from Weymouth and Portland's tion is then left to the artist. The sculptor is expected to MSC scheme provided 10 people with training and work in work at the chosen place or close by, so that the evolving 1988. Youths from the local Borstal have been involved sculpture can be seen and discussed by those who will more recently. From the beginning, much debate has gone 'own' it. The emphasis is on local materials sympathetic to on in the local newspapers, the Chesil Gallery, in the pubs, and at the place itself as people walk by, discuss progress, the place.

In encouraging people -landholders or local commu- and offer a hand. nities - to commission sculptors to crystallize feelings The footpaths are sacrosanct - the terraces dip to allow about their place in a public and permanent way, we are passage to the old way downhill, and wind to draw the lines trying to liberate sculpture into the wild and to give anyone of the contouring paths. The Nature Con servance Council courage to commission art, however modest, to help com- is advising on the reintroduction of indigenous grass spemunicate their caring. We are emphasizing that our feel- cies and local schools and groups will help in the naturalings about our everyday landscapes are important and izing process. The Devon and Dorset Regiment, who dug should be taken seriously; that our moment in history has the first sod, will revisit each year to help with maintesomething to offer and that in setting our imagination free nance. to explore places we can help initiate new cultural touchstones worthy of our time.

The small town of Chiswell in Dorset had become used to being overwhelmed by the sea as it converged at the junction ofChesil Beach and the Isle of Portland. Millions of pounds and much engineering ingenuity have now built a sea wall of protection for those who live below the great gravel bank. To celebrate safety from the sea and signal a local renaissance the town council had the idea of creating a sculpture to help build new pride and interest in the town.

For centuries sculpture has been created on the Isle of Portland and had been taken to grace cathedrals, stately homes, and, more recently, office blocks. Now the demand was to create and keep a sculpture on the island.With the help of the Chesil Gallery, the town council approached Common Ground's New Milestones project. Together we hammered out ideas: a sculpture for and of the site, reflecting the sea, the hard work, the stories, the natural history, the past and the future relationships between the people and their place.

From Common Ground's index of sculptors John Maine was chosen, an artist with a 20-year working relationship with the local quarrymen and masons. Through talking with individuals, councilors, local community meetings, the Chesil Gallery, and Common Ground, Maine began to There have been the usual criticisms - "We need to offer ideas. Notions for carvings in car parks and the town upgrade our housing before we start with the frilly bits" square gave way to an engineering work at the place where but people are recognizing that somebody is taking time to the Great Chesil Bank hits the island: an uneasy slipping come into their place to work with them, to create somepatch of dumped earth, on the way to everywhere. Echoing thing that's causing them to ask questions about their the rolling waves, the ancient farming terraces and slope place, and which is already the focus of local interest and stabilization works, a new idea emerged - five terraces to indeed national and international excitement, too. stop the land [from] sliding, held back by drystone walls, Chiswell, a town of singular character, rather than each one built with stone from a different level of the accepting something that could have been put anywhere, Portland beds, each worked in discrete masonry tech- has demanded something unique to itself, has reinforced niques appropriate to the stone. At one stroke this would its locally distinctive patterns. A place has been created to make visible the geology, the longstanding masonry and visit, to pause, to look at and to look from, a place from stone walling traditions, and allude to the farming and which new beginnings can flow. quarrying history and the dominance of the sea.

Common Ground and local people raised money from

In our quest for the new, it should not be beyond our wit to sympathetically respond to the particularities of the place, to listen to the knowledge and needs of local people, and to retrieve the soul as well as to create anew subtle, interesting places that have the ability to enrich, to haunt, to awaken: places with meaning.

In Dorset (the pilot site for the New Milestones project), Somerset, Cleveland, Lincolnshire, Glasgow, Harrogate, and Dundee, the New Milestones idea is spreading. Peter Randall-Page, Simon Thomas, Andy Goldsworthy, Christing Angus, John Maine, Michael Fairfax, Alain Ayers, and Richard Farrington have all risen to the exacting demands of local commission .

Public art has generally been commi ioned by wealthy individuals, large companie ,or large public bodies; rarely has a community thought it elf capable of commissioning a craftsperson or arti t. Often ideas have focu ed around "spaces and sites" not places, around "the public" not people - abstractions which allow arrogance in commissioner and artist. The New Milestones Project is about what places mean to the people who live in them, about how to express and extend that meaning in an imaginative and accessible way through culpture.

COUNTRY SEATS Ordinary places have extraordinary tales to tell. The smallest detail can offer clues to add to the richness of current activity. Writers and arti ts can help a little to expose the secrets of places, and to add to them.

With the Woodland Trust, Common Ground initiated a series of commissions for sculptors and craftspeople to make seats in and for specific woods. The Trust had been left a legacy specifically to provide seats and was considering turning it down, not wishing to "urbanize" its woods.

We suggested that unique seats made by sculptors and craftspeople could do much to enhance their woods and provoke people to pause and look afresh.

Seats are interesting manifestations: they have their own presence and can form a powerful visual or symbolic focus acting as meeting place or goal; they can be bold or retiring, leaning places or hides. Whatever their personality and intention, having savored their essence the sensible thing, of course, is to sit on them, whereupon their presence melts away and the place envelopes your thoughts.

With financial and administrative support from Ea tern Arts, three sculptors were commissioned to make seats in Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, and Norfolk. Mike Petts worked in Tyrrel's Wood, Norfolk, for three months and produced three very varied seats. The first incorporates a seated figure (a green man) woven from living coppice hazel. This will need pruning from time to time and the local community has willingly undertaken this responsibility. The second, a sort of hide, uses coppice hazel woven in the form of a traditional settle, with a carved oak and ash seat. The third is a group of branching seats of oak and ash creating a place where people like to gather. Here on the parish boundary it is easy to imagine old and new stories of the place being invented and retold.

continued on page 26

One of John Main¡s walls on the Isle of Portland.

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PUB L I CAR T

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HISTORIC PLACES

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Model for Alexandria Marsh and Gardens, a project by Buster Simpson, Laura Sindell, Mark Spitzer, and Becca Hansen .

I

ALEXANDRIA, VA. b y

Patricia

Fuller

lexandria, Va., is a community seeking to maintain a sense of its history as it is propelled into the future by the pressures of development and growth. The city, which lies across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., dates back to the colonial era. George Washington owned land here and was among its early surveyors.

George Mason and Robert E. Lee were native sons. Today, the historic Old Town Alexandria district, with many restored I 8th- and 19th-century homes, is a frequent destination for visitors to the national capital area. At the other end of King Street, the George Washington Masonic National Memorial marks the western edge of Alexandria's downtown core. The new King Street metro station, in the shadow of the monument, is a magnet for the new development that is reshaping contemporary Alexandria. This direct transit link with the District of Columbia enhances its position in the regional market for office and retail space.

When developers around the station area took an urban design plan to the city which included a small park to be built on a parcel along King Street across from the metro station, the Alexandria arts commission saw an important opportunity for public art in the community. While Alexandria is rich in historic and architecturally significant buildings, its legacy of public art is scant. Arts commission members wanted to see public art as a central aspect of the park design from the outset. This was a chance to set an important precedent in a community with little experience of public art, and no publicly commissioned contemporary work.

Member of the arts commission met with the developers, and it wa initially agreed to work through the King Street Task Force, a local association of public, private, and community interests, to sponsor a public art commision in concert with the design of the new park. A steering committee wa appointed to choose an artist and to carry out the public approval process.

The de ign selection process was a subject of intense discussion and debate within the project steering committee, as it sought to meet what emerged as the overriding concerns. Primary among these was a successful relationship of art and design within the larger urban design plan.

No less critical was that the site design should take account of Alexandria and its history. At the same time, the committee decided it wanted more than one initial design concept from which to choose. What finally emerged was tailored to balance these sometimes competing concerns.

The area plan would be taken as a starting point to define only the footprint and urban design parameters of the park

A

site. Individual artists would be invited to work with collaborators from the design professions to propose concepts as well as public art for the site. Budgets for art and design would not be segregated, and the nature of each would be left to the teams to propose.

The concept selected for the park was developed collaboratively by Lewis "Buster" Simpson and Laura Sindell, visual artists, Mark Spitzer, architect, and Becca Hansen, landscape architect, all of Seattle. Their design speaks of Alexandria in the historical present, revealing and referencing aspects of the place and its past to create a new hybrid landmark for the city which confounds traditional distinctions of sculpture, architecture, and design. It was developed through a process of investigation and consultation with the community about the place, its history, and its present circumstances.

On the team's initial visit to Alexandria for the predesign briefing meeting, city staff and residents presented information about the site and provided historical, urban design, political, development, economic, and social perspectives. Historian T. Michael Miller's detailed history of upper King Street revealed it as a longstanding axis of transportation and urbanizing development for nearly 250 years. It also revealed that the site had been a wetland along Hooff's Run, a troublesome creek which had been filled and diverted underground in a box culvert. Exploring on their own and in subsequent contacts, the members began to pick up and follow various leads on the site. An early important contact was the city's archaeologist, Dr. Pamela Cressey, who became an important link with the community for the team on subsequent visits.

According to Mark Spitzer, the team members' interests varied widely at the beginning. "Buster felt strongly that we should bring the stream back," recalls Spitzer.

"Laura explored the cultural relations between races, Alexandria's social history, and the influence of George Washington's presence. Mark looked at construction strategies which would maximize the impact of the modest $300,000 construction budget. And Becca searched for landscape and plant material precedents from colonial times to the present. Together, we considered digging down into the site and putting back a swamp, planting tobacco or wheat, building enclosures of pipes and wires covered with vines and somehow including George Washington's hat. Out of our collecti ve desires emerged a design including some parts of all these elements but one framed by three larger goals: â&#x20AC;˘ First, the park had to re-establish some portion of what had been lost and a connection to the history of that process. â&#x20AC;˘ Second, it had to provide opportunities for socialization genuine enough that we could feel the space would

18 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991

draw people to it. â&#x20AC;˘ And third, the park had to express the values and the history of development."

The concept presented by the Simpson-Sindell-SpitzerHansen team integrated these goals and addressed the history of the place without resorting to what one team member has called "colonial recall," the use of motifs and forms employed to give a "historic" look to things and satisfy pressures from historic preservation interests. While the design employs a variety of local and historical references, these are not incorporated literally, but are transformed in the service of a design that is intended by the designers to be "open to multiple readings . . . and available to redefinition by those who will use and enjoy it."

The team's design statement identified the sources and strategies which informed their design as follows: "The Spring Garden [which once existed] near the site, Alexandria gardens and garden clubs, and the general idea of Southern gardens were all important, [as was] the metaphor of the garden as bower or intimate room.

"We started with George Washington's hat as a symbol of his pervasive influence. Part of the hat disappeared and the remainder was seen as a plow symbolizing the agricultural ordering of the land, as a boat prow, reflecting Alexandria as a port, and as a train cowcatcher, referencing the continuing presence of rail transportation at this site.

"The American penchant for the grid as a planning device is reflected in the relentless way in which we used a grid to order the gardens. Two grids are combined into one in a syncopated way [in the trellis structures]. The uppermost rectangular grid mimics the planning grid of Alexandria and is superimposed over the greenery. The lower grid is ironically triangular, derived from the fact that the site sits in an exception to the regularity of Alexandria's layout.

"The marsh ... literally reintroduces a wetland to the area where one existed. It will exist as a cattail museum, requiring human care. This reflects the way in which the activities of humans have accelerated in the last few generations to the point where we now must keep our wilderness in preserves."

Following selection of their concept, the team returned to Alexandria for a workshop with city officials and staff, task force members, and community representatives. The design has evolved in response to these interchanges in various ways. Perhaps most unfortunately, the exposure of the Hooff's Run culvert proved infeasible given its location in the street right-of-way just outside the site perimeter. The hat form has become bifurcated, in part to facilitate handicapped access, which all agree makes for a

continued on page 26

+ m ~ The Hidden City Revealed PUB L I CAR T

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n what must have been a moment's lapse in his distinguished career, I once heard Jonathan Barnett deliver a paper in which he outlined the need for a new type of urban designer. This member of a city's design staff would check to see that newspaper vending machines are put on street comers in an orderly fashion, that parking meter posts are standing up straight, that street signs hang correctly on their poles, and other similar tasks - the goodhousekeeping approach to urban design. It seems to be a popular approach, judging from the sanitized look of a lot of streetscapes installed in cities during the 1980s.

The complaint is not against keeping the city clean and looking like someone cares for it, but against removing all of the character of the city by overly self-conscious design. The assertive grace that comes to a painting when the painter has a confident lightness of touch is not very often present in contemporary urban design . Instead, there is a leaden quality to a lot of it that can be seen not only in a fussiness with materials and surface patterns, but in a complete lack of tolerance for working with existing conditions.

This is especially evident in the "historic districts" of cities. It isn't an unreasonable expectation to think that in a historic district a person might see not only old buildings, but some of the accumulated character of age. It doesn't work out that way very often. Designers and developers seem to have a penchant for scrubbing and sanitizing old buildings to within an inch of their lives. They come out looking more like imitations of themselves than like venerable old presences that have earned authenticity and authority.

The troublesome frailties and eccentricities that are the true record of acquired age, and that make old buildings, like old people; so interesting, are removed. Displays of photographs and artifacts are offered instead, as a sort of come-on that can stir nostalgia, but no deeper connection with the past. There's big money to be made through nostalgia, however.

Cleveland's downtown historic area, the Warehouse District, wasn't redeveloped until the mid-1980s, largely because the state building code prohibited reuse of woodframe buildings as office or living spaces. While the law was changed in 1983, much of the building stock had already been demolished by then, though some parts of the area's history had escaped through benign neglect.

A hillside dump site used consistently from the 1830s to the 1920s which was loaded with artifacts is one example; the stone parts of an 1878 viaduct abutment and the stone steps and wall of an 1870s lighthouse are among the others. Some of them were on public land, 'some were not.

Although the whole district is under the protection of the city's Landmarks Commission, these sites really had no constituency. They were not widely recognized as public assets, their scale and nature made them less of a priority for preservation than buildings, and most of them had not been documented in any formal way.

The Cleveland Committee for Public Art has had offices in the Warehouse District since 1984. All of our early projects were done there, and we became accustomed to thinking about how historical sites and contemporary art could fit together. By 1987, it was clear that historical sites could be used to build a constituency for public art erected on them, and that the inverse was equally true. Neglected historical sites and artifacts scattered along the streets provide exactly the diversity of experience that most new urban design edits out. These sites formed the basis for a long-range public art plan for our projects in the Warehouse District and adjoining areas of Cleveland.

This plan, which took a year to complete, inventoried

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all such sites in the designated area of the city, provided basic historical research on each of them, evaluated them in terms of relative importance, and made recommendations about each site's potential for public art. The planning team was multidisciplinary, including designers, planners, historians, and archaeologists.

Twenty-one sites were chosen to be included in the plan, which was summarized and condensed in a free map and guide titled The Hidden City Revealed. Publishing the guide not only helped build a constituency for the sites that has already aided in preserving some of them, it built a fund-raising base for the Committee for Public Art as we began to implement the plan.

The site chosen to be developed first was the eastern abutment of the 1878 Superior Viaduct, the first high-level bridge to span the Cuyahoga River and join the east and west sides of Cleveland. The viaduct was mostly demolished after its replacement was opened in 1918, but fragments still stand on both sides of the river, right at the juncture of downtown and the Flats, an old industrial area that's now an entertainment district and one of the only pieces of public land to command such dramatic views of the river valley.

In 1987, it was an overgrown half-acre parcel, littered with trash, and used for squatter parking. Its potential had not been overlooked by commercial developers who made proposals for its use from time to time, but the city and county readily agreed to a proposal to tum it into a public open space. (It can't be called a park because it's technically a bridge right-of-way, and putting a "park" there could cause problems with federal bridge repair funds.)

We named it Viaduct Gateway.

A team consisting of Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, artists from New York; Patricia Stevens, landscape architect from Cleveland; and Michael Bakos and Elsa Johnson, the designers who worked on The Hidden City Revealed plan, was commissioned to design the space. For the commission, they were asked to respect the history of the site, save all of the artifacts present, make the most of the view, and design a comfortable place for people. They also had to find some way of explaining the history of the site to visitors without putting up a lot of wordy markers. The team brought in more historians and archaeologists, including a plant archaeologist, to help them with their research. A series of public meetings were held to hear from potential users of the space.

The design that evolved used the upper level as an overlook. The lower level was turned into a sloping grassy lawn with curbs and sidewalks that mapped out the footprint of the viaduct's roadbed as it headed toward the river.

The artifacts incorporated into the design included the retaining wall of the abutment and eight massive stone pedestals of the Viaduct, cobbled road surfaces, some steel remnants of a billboard that once stood on the upper level, and plants.

From the plant archaeologist it was learned that most of the overgrowth on the site consisted of wildflowers, grasses, and trees that could be used in ornamental gardens. Fur-

thermore, most of them were not native to Cleveland or even northern Ohio, but had been carried there as secds stuck onto railroad cars and boats from other parts of the country. Three peach trees were growing on the site, apparently from seeds cast away with someone's lunch bag. These plants were one of the existing conditions that the designers decided had to be respected. They were redirected into plant beds, and have become the garden materials of the finished space.

The history of the site is sketched out in a series of 15 markers designed by Ericson and Ziegler. These are minimalist markers consisting of a verb and a date "Proposed April 12, 1870," "Razed Spring 1930," "Planted May 1, 1990." The markers are enlarged samples of handwriting cut from aluminum and attached to the appropriate artifacts. The information was researched by the artists so as to include only documented information. The handwriting was done either by people actually connected with the viaduct and site, or their descendants. For example, at the 1878 dedication of the viaduct, President William McKinley made one of the toasts . A descendant of McKinley, Candice McKinley, has written this marker.

Identifying these people and getting their cooperation was not one of the simpler parts of the project.

Viaduct Gateway was substantially completed in 1990, with some details to be done this spring. The next part of The Hidden City Revealed to be undertaken wiU be development of another park, this one at the river's edge, on the site that is generally agreed to be the spot where Moses Cleveland founded the city.

Don Harvey is an artist who lives in Cleveland, the president of the Committee for Public Art, and professor of art at The University of Akron.

Viaduct Gateway: Cleveland, Ohio Design Team: Kate Ericson, Mel Ziegler, artists; Patricia Stevens, landscape architect; Michael Bakos, Elsa Johnson, environmental designers Sponsors: Committee for Public Art, Historic Warehouse District Development Corp., Flats Oxbow Association, Cleveland Jaycees Funders: National Endowment for the Arts; Ohio Arts Council; Historic Warehouse District Development Corp., Kaiser Permanente; The Lyda Ebert Family Foundation; John P. Murphy Foundation; The Cleveland Foundation; The George Gund Foundation; BP America; Stouffer Corporation Fund; The George W. Codrington Charitable Foundation; Grief Bros. Corporation; Gould, Inc. Foundation; The Cleveland Cliffs Foundation and Bank One Cost: $254,500 Maintenance Endowment Set-Aside: $37,500

PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991 19

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CHARLESTON, S.C.

forms, will create a temporary slave cemetery.

Puryear's personal tie to Sierra Leone through his time in the Peace Corps should naturally Men manage reality by their constructions. unite him with Charleston ' s deep connection to - Ihab Hassan '1. that country. Ithas been documented that one of The Dismemberment of Orpheus .w the major sources for slaves bound for the South Carolina low country was this West African There is no truth, only evidence. region 's "Rice" or "Slave" Coast. Furthermore, - Jamie Lawrence Gullah, still a prominent dialect of present-day , WI Charleston, is known to stem from the Krio efi ning public art in a city which .: language of Sierra Leone. is da il y scru ti nized for its archiSeveral artists, including Liz Magor and the tecture, its history, and its people team of Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, will ; is a diffic ul t task. C learly, engage in exploration of Charleston' s wellCharleston, S.c., is a prime exentrenched military history . Historical contexts ample of such a city. With a 300aside, the single largest source of revenue today year history, an archi tecture all its own and a "South Carolina's Cherubs (after Raphael),"by George N. Barnard (1874for Charleston County is the military. With both di verse population which is almost evenly 75) is the basis for Ronald Jones' 1990 untitled sculptures (facing page) Navy and Air Force bases as well as a military divided between black and white, the city of Charleston is a living, breathing exhibi tion of Southern that one of the main agendas for the exhibition will be college located in Charleston proper, a significant awareinvestigating the various implications of collective memory ness of militarization is evident. cul ture.

Magor's photographic installation of Civil War reCharleston banks on its intrinsic appeal; the chief as history and as art. It is relevant that she chose public pri vate industry is tourism. Last year, in the aftermath of locations rather than existing institutions in which to enactors will walk a fine line between appropriation and documentation. Her work will consider the question of Hurricane Hugo, approximately 5.1 million touri sts spent display artworks addressing thi s particular issue.

Artists were selected whose interests and working authenticity and verisimilitude while investigating the close to $850 million vi siting Charleston .

The interpretation and exploitation of Charleston 's methods might enrich an understanding of Charleston ' s concept of personal identity. The joint effort of Ericson and culture has largely remained under the jurisdiction of the diverse history. More than 20 internationally recognized Ziegler in "Camouflage History" will address illusion by well-established conventions of the local historical and artists who investigate the issues of history, identity, and painting a house in a camouflage pattern with the 72 paint preservation ocieties. A solitary vision of the city 's his- memory were comrrussioned to contribute installations to colors approved by the Charleston Board of Architectural tory is subscribed to and promoted, not only by and the exhibition. Among the artists included are Christian Review.

Inherent in Places with a Past: New Site-Specific Art in between Charlestonians, but by licensed tour guides in Boltanski, Chris Burden, Cindy Sherman, David Hammons, Narelle Jubelin, Houston Conwill, Gwylene Gallimard Charleston are some issues which should rightly be adhistoric homes, on carriage rides, and in walking tours.

This version of history is a romanticized vision perpetu- and Jean-Marie Mauclet, and James Coleman. dressed by the curator, the artists, and the people of While the Spoleto Festival is renowned for presenting Charleston. Can these artists truly place their art outside ating all sorts of legends and mythologies surrounding experiences, which run the gamut from aristocrats to world-class performll!1ces of music, dance, and theater, the confines of museum elitism when the entire city of imrrugrants, from slavery to the Civil War. Here, the war until now the festival lias never comrrutted itself equally to Charleston functions as a permanent exhibition? While that nearly permanently dissolved the United States is the visual arts. Nor has such a project on an equivalent scale there is already a lengthy pattern of other cultures comdelicately referred to as "the War of Northern Aggression ." been attempted anywhere in the United States. Unusual in menting on Southern ways, what is the validity of an While there is a certain charm to presenting tills narrow that these places are comrrussioned for historic sites rather interpretation of a secluded history by those considered to view of Charle ton's lengthy history , one has reason to than to inaugurate a new space, these installations are also be outsiders? Is there any reason to believe that insider believe that considerable exclusion and distortion of infor- created with the knowledge that they will be on display interpretation is more authentic than any other evaluation? temporarily. The single exception to tills premise is the Within what context does any inside or outside commenmation has occurred.

According to Millicent Brown of the College of work of Ronald Jones. tary achieve "truth" status? What should be and what will Jones will install a marble bas relief in the Emmanuel be the effects of these subjective interpretations on Charleston 's Avery Research Center for African-American Hi story and Culture, "We experience a striking need to African Methodist Episcopal Church. Based upon two Charleston, its peoples and its histories? re-evaluate existing documentation as well as uncover new cherubs in Raphael 's "Sistine Madonna" and recreated While the answers to these questions may have to wait evidence especially as it pertains to the black experience in photographically by George N. Barnard, this piece will until May, what remains clear is that art is not history and Charleston." This statement could be equally true for the commemorate Denmark Vesey. Vesey, a freed man who that what dictates historical fact need not impose itself on history of women, or the middle classes, or the Jews, or any organized an unsuccessful 1822 slave rebellion in Charles- art. Simple, but significant. group outside of the dominant merchant or plantation ton, was also an early leader of this congregation. The classe . And until recently , there has been no reason to pastor and church trustees have asked Jones to leave this Beth Dinoff is curator of the College of Charleston's raise the question of authenticity. memorial on view permanently at the entrance to the John Rivers Communications Museum.

The olution to objectively evaluating history over the church. di lance of time and acro s culture i necessarily difficult Elizabeth Newman will use the attic floor of the Places with a Past: a well as complex. When the collecti ve memories of a Middleton-Pinckney House on peninsular Charleston to culture are strictly delineated, who remains to determine investigate childhood in the 19th century. Her piece will New Site-Specific Art in Charleston that a more "correct" interpretation should reign? After all, point toward the dichotomy prevalent in the South between the world wa fl at until there was enough evidence to the classic segregation of whites and blacks, and white domes- Date: May 24 . August 4, 1991 contrary. tic dependency upon blacks. By using objects usually Location: Spoleto Festival U. S. A. , Charleston, S. C..

Traditionally, artist have pl ayed a key role in pointing found in domestic interiors, such as family photographs out over ight in hi torical evaluations, be they fac tual in and children's furniture, Newman's installation seeks to Curator: Mary Jane Jacob - Independent curator based in Chicago nature or injustice to humanity. And recently, artists explore the heretofore missing social history of women Artists: Christian Boltanski, Chris Burden, Cindy Sherman, Martin worki ng squarely within po t-moderni st philosophy have and children.

Puryear, David Hammons, Jannis Keunellis, Houston Conwill, Ian pointedly foc u ed their attention to numerou as pects of Working along similar lines, Lorna Simpson will ex- Hamilton Finlay, Anthony Gormley, Ann Hamilton, Ronald Jones, Narelle hi torical material culture including adverti ing (Jenny amine slave life through audio tapes, photographs, and Jubelin, Liz Magor, Lorna Simpson, Barbara Steinman, James Coleman, Holzer), Nazi Germany (Jonathan Borofsky and Anselm object , in a row offive former slave cabins. This piece will Kate Ericson and Mel Ziegler, Joyce Scott, Gwylene Gallimard and Jean-Marie Mauclet, and Elizabeth Newman.

Kiefer), and cience and technology (Laurie Anderson). emphasize is ues of memory, identity, and race. InterestIn light of the e currents surging thro ugh the standard ingly, one of the fi rst battles of the Civil War was fo ught Sponsors: This exhibition is the result of a collaboration between the art market and within gallerie and mll eums, Spoleto nearby by an all-black battalion. Focusing on the experi- Spoleto Festival USA, City of Charleston, and Gibbes Museum of Art. Festival U. S. A. now in its 15th season, i undertaki ng its ences of African who were brought to the continent as Funding : The National Endowment for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, most ambitiou visual arts project ever. Entitled Places with slaves, Simpson's installation will serve:. to reinterpret an the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Nathan Cummings a Past: New Site-Specific Art ill Charleston , the exhibition entire culture that legally condoned one person's bondage Foundation, the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Canada Council/External Affairs and Australia Council for the Visual ArtS/Crafts Board. is curated by Mary Jane Jacob, who is be t know n for her to another. multi-cultura l curator/artist collaboration . Jacob uggests Marti n Puryear, know n for his evocative sculptural Cost: $583,000

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20 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991

HISTORIC PLACES

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he Ancient Way," traveled for centuries by Native Americans, Spanish explorers, and others is still in use today. Now paved, it is New Mexico State Road 53 and is one road to Zuni Pueblo, a town located in western New Mexico near the Arizona border. This small community is also the home of Alex Seowtewa (pronounced sayotto-wa), a Zuni artist who has been working on kachina murals in the town's Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe Mission Church since 1970.

The mission was established by the Franciscan missionaries in Halona (present-day Zuni Pueblo) under Our Lady of Conception in 1629. During the 12 years fo llowing the successful revolt of the Native Americans against the Spaniards in August ofl680, the mission was abandoned and neglected. By the early 1700s, ithad been rebuiltby the Franciscans under Our Lady of Guadalupe, but due to a lack of support from Mexico, which had undergone a revolution , the mission was once again abandoned.

Seowtewa reports that, according to church records, the last mass held in Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe took place in 1827.

Seowtewa remembered the church (which he and his friends had used as a play area) in ruin, with dirt from the collapsed roof and adobe walls filling the interior to a depth of three to four feet. But in the 1960s, Rev. Niles Kraft, a Franciscan Catholic Priest, came to Zuni Pueblo from Kansas City, Mo., and in 1966 initiated the restoration and reconstruction of the Old Mission. Due to the poor condition of the structure, the upper portion of the walls as well as the roof and choir loft needed to be reconstructed.

The reconstruction of the mission was completed by 1970, but was not dedicated until 1972. The reconstruction reportedly required 23,000 adobes (clay bricks) for the walls and 35,000 branches for the vigas. Vigas, which rest

22 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991

on massive wooden supports, are used to support the roofing material. The main beam which holds the choir loft was able to be salvaged and an analysis of its rings dated the tree, a mature ponderosa pine, back to 1336. During this work, Rev. Kraft asked Seowtewa, who was then employed as a bus driver, to build a confessional for the mission. Several weeks after Seowtewa had begun work on the confessional, his father, Charlie Chuyate, stopped by to see him and mentioned that long ago there had been paintings of kachinas [an elaborately costumed figure, representing for the Zuni religion roughly what a saint does for Catholicism] on the inside walls of the mission . The paintings, according to Alex's father were "of the disciplinary [kachina] types such as A'doshle', Hi 'naiwe', Demdonshe', and were all facing the altar." Seowtewa's father, now dead, was an artist and a historian, but more significantly he was also head medicine man to the Galaxy Fraternity [a tribal organization 1, whose influence and

support ultimately helped Alex to initiate the mural.

"The intent and purpose of these earlier murals inside the church is unknown to me," says Seowtewa, "because no records exist anywhere of murals inside the church. My own personal feeling is that perhaps early church officials during the Spanish rule decided to blend the two cultures together in their efforts to encourage more Zunis to attend church."

The image of the disciplinary kachinas on the walls remained with Seowtewa as he worked on the confessional in the silent, dark mission. Looking at the white plastered adobe walls, he felt a beginning. On his way home after work, he stopped by the rectory to see Rev. Kraft and brought up the conversation he had had with his father. Rev. Kraft 'istened and gave Alex the green light.

To research his project, Alex spoke with his wife's paternal uncle, whom he estimated was over 100 years old. His uncle remembered playing in and around the mission, which at that time still had a roof. On the inside walls, his uncle said, were "bogey man" kachinas that all faced the altar. Other elders with whom Seowtewa spoke also confirmed the existence of "paintings" inside the Old . Mission. His preliminary research complete, Seowtewa went to Gallup, bought some art supplies, and began his work.

Rather than use the disciplinary kachinas, called Ko' Ko ' in Zuni, Alex chose to use kachinas that represent the seasonal cycles. Ten feet from top to bottom, the paintings begin near the altar on the north wall with the figures of the kachinas who playa major role during the winter solstice.

The winter solstice marks the beginning of the Zuni calendar and is observed by 10 days of fasting. The lead figure is Baudewa, followed by the father of the mudheads [signifying the "dark" side of existence], then the sponsor of Shulawitsi, the fire god, who is trailed by Shulawitsi himself. Shulawitsi, Seowtewa remarks, carries a cedar torch which parallels in significance a candle lit in church.

The last figure on the north wall took Alex and his son, Kenneth, eleven and a half months to complete and is of a figure associated with Sha'lak'o. Rather than use all six Sha'lak'o figures, Seowtewa chose to use one to represent all the others. The landscape on which all the figures stand is what one would see looking north from Zuni.

The southern wall begins with figures associated with spring. The landscape, which represents the terrain south of Zuni, is of melting snow and the blossoming of native plants and flowers. Unlike the north wall that reflects one season, the south wall encompasses the three remaining phases: spring, summer, and autumn. Starting near the altar is a double figure that represents initiation into a society which used to take place every four years, but last took place approximately 13 years ago. The initiation of Zuni males into a society parallels baptism into a Christian church.

Further down the mural is a sun symbol with prayer sticks, which represents the summer solstice. The other figures are the highlighted summer rain dancers, representing all six kivas of Zuni. The kivas reflect the culture's six recognized directions: the north, the west, the south, the east, the zenith, and the nadir. One figure now exists only as an image: Dash' camika, the little imitator, who would only dance at the special request of kiva leaders. The last member who knew the dance died about six or seven years ago, Seowtewa notes. No one was initiated into the society and now the dance has been lost - perhaps taken back by the same kachinas who gave it to the Zuni in the first place.

Further down the mural is an image of the native crops of the Zuni people. The most striking features are of the yellow and blue com stalks, representing the yellow and blue com plants grown by the Zuni. In each com stalk is a bird singing to the com and telling the people not to despair because he is bringing the rain. There are two mesas in the background which, Seowtewa explains, represent Zuni heaven. The image of the com, birds, and mesas is analogous to a prayer.

Des pi te the benefi ts of preservi ng a bi t of the culture visually, there has been some criticism of Seowtewa's work. Some traditional Zunis feel, and other traditional Pueblos would agree, that the depiction of the kachinas is morally wrong. Since the boom of tourism there has been a cashing in on the manufacture of Indian artifacts that have traces of native religious significance attached to the objects, the kachina and fetish being the most popular.

But what Alex has set out to accomplish was not conceived out of ego or greed; he began and labors at his work out of love for his people and their culture. He is not on salary; his payment for his effort comes from donations and grants . When the kachinas who decide such things began their subtle dance and Seowtewa was possessed of the idea to execute the mural, he did so because it was necessary. The old ways, like all things in nature, must adapt, overcome, sometimes improvise, or perish. There are no Zuni versions of an Arthur Murray School to teach the dances. Without the significance behind the dance, the story behind the mask, there is nothing but a memory of what once was. Seowtewa has placed some Zuni images for his people's youth, who may at some time wonder why this or that dance no longer exists, why no one learned it. Alex Seowtewa wants the Zuni young to know what it is to be Zuni. To have the ability to move within two cultures that can coexist without giving up either one - this is the fraternity of the future.

Thomas Chavarria is assistant public art coordinator for the state of New Mexico.

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On Uiew Journal of Public Rrt and Desiqn Reviewed by lack Becker

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was surprised and delighted to finally see a copy of On View, Journal of Public Art and Design. It' s a hard magazine to find. Originally developed at Harvard University's Program on Public Space Partnerships at the Kennedy School of Government, On View is now part of the independent On View Public Art And Design Association. Members of the association receive the Journal three times per year, along with an association newsletter and reduced rates to conferences and events.

In its first issue On View attempts to cover a lot of ground, and for the most part, it does so with style and grace. This is a classy magazine that anyone would be proud to leave on their coffee table, but it's also very expensive, which is hard to overlook these days. The cost of producing On View surely keeps it from being a widely distributed, accessible magazine, one that would be beneficial to a broad community interested in public art. Artists, in particular, are going to have a hard time spending $75 per year to receive this publication. For the most part, it isn't available at libraries or book stores, so we're really talking about limited access here.

The magazine manages to cover broad geographic areas in the United States by maintaining regional correspondents, many of whom are public art program administrators or well-informed writers.

Each issue includes an update of activities from the various regions, a forum section which brings together opinions from a dozen professionals throughout the country, and several feature articles, many with full-color photographs of works in progress, completed projects, or artists' renderings.

The first issue also includes a unique artist-designed centerfold artwork. Yet the small size of many of the photos was a disappointment, particularly since most of the large-format color shots were of works commissioned for the city of Barcelona, a recently developed collection which received mostly negative coverage.

The feature articles and "Viewpoints" section were clearly the highlights of this issue, particularly Patricia Phillips' article "Public Art's Critical Condition," in which she calls for a new kind of art and social criticism hybrid to address public art: "The role of any critic is to challenge authority and to stimulate dialogue ... criticism must be sustained by a radical conscience. To engage in the criticism of public art is not only an act of intellectual synthesis, but also a commitment to the public potential of the written word. Like the characteristics of public life that are formed and founded in the individual psyche, the critical process begins at a most private level. But criticism that does not reach out to a

broad audience remains only interesting personal opinion or reflection. To achieve resonance, to become the kind of communicative art that great criticism can be, it must stimulate individual consciousness and public debate on both aesthetic and social issues .. . A critical essay should stimulate response, controversy, more criticism, and more voices."

Also noteworthy was Steven Bingler's review of the MacArthur Park "Experiment," in which he discusses the success and failure of artists' efforts to solve social ills in Los Angeles. But the most

This is a classy magazine that anyone would be proud to leave on their coffee table, but it's also very expensive, which is hard to overlook these days.

The cost of producing On View surely keeps it from being a widely distributed, accessible magazine, one that would be beneficial to a broad community interested in public art. Artists, in particular, are going to have a hard time spending $75 per year to receive this publication.

telling comments about the state of public art today were the two brief responses by Marc Palley and Michael Moore in the Viewpoints section.

Palley says, "It's a wonderful beginning, this community participation and artwork responding to historical, social, and physical context, but it will be 10 years before artists and communities have enough practice to have any real dialogue." He also notes that "a lot of the current problem has to do with the American educational system, about the mindset that formed in the public schools. People are just so badly educated that they are prejudiced against things they don' t understand. This is the most significant battle we have to fight, and we're not just talking about how people are going to respond to a weird piece of public art. The collapse of our public school system has profound implications."

Michael Moore suggests: "It's a process of opening up context, so that the public as well as artists can approach it with as few preconceptions as possible . . .

I think artists are important not in their abi lity as artisans, or as craftspeople who make things, but as professionals who can conceptualize issues in the world in which we are living - for the vision and insight that they bring."

According to Stella Tarnay, managing editor, On View has over 750 members to date, many of them artists and art administrators. "There's a really broad audience out there for public art information. We have even begun hearing from several foreign countries interested in On View. In particular, we want to hear from more program administrators who wish to promote their activities in our national listings section."

This is a noble effort, but one that will require ongoing staff support. The big issue is continued funding: The early support of the NEA, the LEF Foundation, and the Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities made On View possible, but maintaining this level will not be easy. As someone involved in starting a public arts magazine, I can applaud the great effort that went into putting this first issue together. At the same time I wonder how they're going to keep this up. If Public Art Review is hard to find - and it is - On View is going to be even more difficult. All I can say is keep public art information public, and don't be afraid to beg for money.

Jack Becker is an artist and arts development manager for the city of St. Paul's Department of Planning and Economic Development.

Send requests for membership or subscription information to On View Public Art and Design Association, 686 Massachusetts Ave., Suite 400, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.

PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991 23

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Ha~a Yinq Lin at the Walker Art Center [lUlL HIGHTS MfMOHlnL MOHTGOMfHV, nLn.

by Bruce N. Wright Ost people can remember where they were when first told of President Kennedy's assassination, what they were doing when Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was shot down.

The shock of this and other poignant events echoed throughout the ' 60s and '70s and brought home the significance of the cultural change taking place across the land .

The civil rights movement touched one family on a long, hot summer evening in July 1967. Returning at dusk from our annual trek to the eastern sandduned shores of Lake Michigan, we wondered out loud why there were so many military trucks loaded with Marines passing us on our way back into Detroit on 1-96.

As we were unpacking the car back home, our neighbors came running out houting incredulously, "What are you doing outside?! Don't you know there's a curfew on?! Nobody's to be outside after nine o'clock! There's a riot going on downtown!" I was ajunior in high school at the time and attending summer school downtown in an arts program where being white was con idered a minority.

Many of my high school friends were black. And yellow, red, brown, and any number of ethnic stocks or persuasions that could be imagined. After the riot ate their way through several day of battle and burning, and a brief semblance of order wa imposed by the National Guard (the troop passing u on the highway), a ten ion arose among all of u teens. Were we still friend ? Could we till be friends, hould we be friend ?

Detroit, Newark, Watts, Topeka, Selma, Little Rock, Birmingham, Washington , D.C.: A number of citie have been linked with the civil rights movement in this country. Perhaps none more inextricably than Montgomery, Ala. , where King established his parish, and where supercharged civil right battles flared in the late 1950s and early '60s.

H

A civil rights memorial to the many victims and landmark decisions associated with the movement was dedicated here in 1989. Commissioned for the entry plaza of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery and designed by Maya Ying Lin, the architect/artist most noted for her controversial 1982 design of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., the Civil Rights Memorial is rapidly gaining acceptance as a stop on the civil rights pilgrimage.

Though Lin began a recent talk at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis with fUm clips of civil rights demonstrations to set the mood and provide background, she quickly launched into a straightforward discussion of her process and the architectural problems involved in the memorial. She described, for instance, how the design had to separate activities into two parts: an upper plaza and a lower, more accessible plaza because of the extreme level changes between the street and building entrance. The upper part consists of a slightly curved black granite wall with an inscription from King's famous "I Have A Dream" speech; a thin sheet of water courses down its surface from a pool on the upper terrace. In front of the Wall, an oval black granite "table" balances precariously on a narrow base.

There are 53 entries chiseled on the surface of the table, forming a nearcomplete ring around the outer edge of the inverted cone, beginning with the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation and ending with King's assassination in 1968. It is a veritable "table of contents" for the book of 20th-century American civil rights" history .

Each entry consists of a date and an event, or names associated with events, including people killed for their leadership in the civil rights movement, victims of hate groups, and deaths that caused national outcry. Water bubbles up softly from the center of the table and flows silently over the lip and down the under surface until it drips quietly into a slotted drain to be recycled. Only when someone places a finger into the tabletop water to touch an inscription (which everyone is compelled to do after a while, the litany of disturbing events being so powerful), does the water become turbulent, graphically signifying the need for personal involvement with the movement. It suggests an altar, the names and events constituting sacrificial offerings marked by time.

As with her Vietnam War Memorial, Lin's Civil Rights Memorial allows each individual to come away with personal interpretations of the events summarized .

And, a with the Washington piece, the Montgomery work is a low-key listing of names and date , with the addition of water. Visitors are encouraged to touch.

It was important that the height of the table be approachable. "It's the difference between the height of a table and a kitchen counter," say Lin. "A table is more approachable."

Lin ' proces begin with a thorough background search of the subject. Only after months of intensive re earch does she begin to put a form to the design.

24 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991

During her research for the Montgomery piece, she came across the King speech and this phrase in particular struck a chord: "Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." It was these words that inspired the use of water in the monument and that she had inscribed on the granite wall.

The text carved into the stone is a specially designed typeface based, fittingly, on an ancient roman typeface used for the common man.

Lin's exhaustive, though dispassionate, search for the essence of a problem through background research seems to work. This total immersion that is simultaneously distant from the subject has helped her to arrive at a powerful composition of forms and elements that provide both depth of understanding and a succinct expression of the events memorialized.

Lin states that she has " tended to look outside architecture for my inspiration, particularly to artists such as Robert Smithson and other earth artists." Her forms are reminiscent of Noguchi's in the use of bold, elemental sculptural shapes meticulously placed within a carefully described setting of textural surfaces. The comparison is also true in her use of natural materials such as stone and water - some would say with an essentially Japanese, or Eastern sensitivity to nature and place.

"Architects have never laid exclusive claim to the creation of expressive, enclosed spaces," Nancy Princethal wrote in Walker Art Center's 1988 ScuLpture Inside/Outside exhibition catalogue, "and throughout the 20thcentury a variety of other artists have taken up the challenge, with considerable effect on contemporary architectural art."

And Noguchi's pioneering designs for playgrounds, parks, and monuments, proposed from the 1930s on (though realized only after World War II) established a new license for sculptors concerned with the urban landscape.

Calvin Tomkins, in reference to Richard Serra's public art, states: "One of Serra's primary goals is to force people to see their surroundings in a new way - to make them experience sculpture as place, and place as sculpture."

Lin's work is supremely cognizant of its place in the world - and no issue has dominated recent architectural discussion more than the importance of "placemaking." As citizens we seek uniqueness of place, so the thinking goes. Yet paradoxically we shrink from this experience by our desire for the uniformity and familiarity of the suburban tract. This search for character is expressed in our advertising, our products and shopping malls each grasping at scraps of a fictional past: the "handcrafted" automobile, the rugged, country squire fashio n of Ralph Lauren, the "New England" village slapped (like Old West storefronts) on the face of strip malls and convenience centers.

Lin's memorial transcends this pettiness. Her pieces create a setting imbued with a primal spirit as powerful as Stonehenge, Chichen Itza, or (more recently) the War Memorial at Hiroshima

on a larger scale.

"Art is more like poetry," Lin says.

"That is, the basic idea must be strong.

Architecture is more like a novel." Here, the individual chapters can be less concise and the total picture is provided by the accumulation of details over the length of the book. "This is not to say that either is any easier than the other," notes Lin. Lin, however, feels that the creation of public art is better when the architect brings the artist in at the beginning of the project rather than later when the building has been designed and only leftover space is designated for the art.

For this reason, Lin felt the Montgomery project was a difficult site to accommodate. The artist in her won over the architect - the design of the memorial is asymmetrical, "to contrast with the symmetry of the building."

The memorial "creates a dialogue between you and it," says Lin. It asks many questions of us: How could the events recorded on the table have continued for so long? How can we, in light of all that has passed, allow injustice to continue? And how can we, as Americans, come to grips with these unanswered questions? Will justice be administered more fairly in the future as a result of these people and events?

There are, even now, disturbing indications that the struggle is far from over. An upsurge in racist incidents seems to be occurring across the country, and most disturbing of all, on university campuses where enlightenment should hold sway. Lin's memorial has an opening in the circle of dates for a reason: the battle continues.

Bruce Wright is an architect, freelance design critic, and editor of INFORM Design Journal.

There are 53 entries chiseled on the surface of the table, forming a near-complete ring around the outer edge of the inverted cone, beginning with the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation and ending with King's assassination in 1968. It is a veritable "table of contents" for the book of 20th-century American civil rights history.

BIB LID G RAP H Y

Special thanks to the following sponsors and friends who supported this issue:

Adams, D. & Duval, A. Public Difference: Architecture, Shame, Photography. New York; Christine Burgin Gallery, 1989.

Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Beacon Press, 1969.

Calvi no, Italo. Invisible Cities. Picador, 1979.

Carraher, Ronald. Artists in Spite of Art. New York; Van Norstand & Reinhold, 1970.

Croce, Benedetto. History As The Story Of Liberty. c. 1938. Translated by Sylvia Sprigge. 1st ed., Chicago; Henry Regnery Company, 1970.

Harington, Donald. Let Us Build Us A City. San Diego; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.

Huxtable, Ada Louise. Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger. Washington, D.C.; The Preservation Press, 1986.

King, A. & Clifford, S. Holding Your Ground: An action guide to local conservation. London; Wildwood House, 1987.

Mabey, R., Clifford, S. & King, A. Second Nature. London; Jonathan Cape, 1984.

Manley, Roger. Signs and Wonders: Outsider Art Inside North Carolina. Raleigh, N.C.; North Carolina Museum of Art, 1989.

Morland, J. New Milestones: Sculpture, Community & the Land. London; Common Ground, 1988.

Naives & Visionaries. Walker Art Center catalogue. New York; E.P. Dutton, 1974.

PULP!: The single issue newspaper on trees, woods & us. London; Common Ground, 1989.

Robinson, Charles Mulford. Modern Civic Art or The City Made Beautiful. c. 1903. Arno Press (reprint), 1970.

Rosen, Seymour. In Celebration of Ourselves. San Francisco; California Living Books, 1979.

Coming in Autumn 1991 Public Art Review looks at

Schuy1, Michael, et al. Fantastic Architecture. New York; Harry N. Abrams, 1980.

continued from page 9 guarantee that the site will be preserved for future generations to enjoy, but can be an important part of preservation efforts while also providing recognition for the artist and rus or her work. To have a property considered for listing on the National Register, you first need to complete an NRHP nomination form which may be obtained from your local State Historic Preservation Office, wruch will be able to help you further. The proposal form should demonstrate how well-documented the site is and emphasize how significant it is in the eyes of the community. SPACES is happy to provide more preservation and documentary assistance as the need arises.

According to the National Register criteria, unless the site demonstrates outstanding cultural significance, the site must first be at least 50 years old and the artist must be dead. The kinds of properties eligible for possible listing on the Register include single architectural structures such as houses, park sites, districts - "groups of buildings, structures, or sites that make up a coherent whole, such as a neighborhood or an industrial complex," - and largescale objects: "not portable museum objects, but large movable properties such as fountains and monuments." Most relevant to large-scale contemporary folk art environments, the National Register outlines several qualities that these properties should possess: The site should provide a sense of history, whether architectural or cultural.

Despite the "national" status of the Register, it was conceived to include properties which are of foremost importance to the local community, not just significant at the national level as "great national landmarks."

A site should serve as a good example of vernacular architecture, a particular style, or possess "high artistic values."

Eight folk art environments are currently listed on the Register. Citing them in your proposal will help support your efforts.

To receive a copy of What Are 'the National Register Criteria? as well as

How to Apply the National Register Criteria, write to: The National Register of Historic Places, Interagency Resources Division, National Park Service, P.O. Box 37127, Wasrungton, D. C. 200137127.

[Source: What Are the National Register Criteria?]

LIFE HISTORIES An intimate reflection of the artist's values, a folk art environment is similarly a physical testimony to the unique imagination of its builder. The artist's life experiences undoubtedly imbue the environment with its character. The artist has sometimes held various jobs and defied convention throughout his or her life, and has often constructed the environment after retirement. An oral history will permanently document the life of a creative and tenacious individual while complementing the environment's physical monument to the artist's imagination. At the very least we recommend organizing a time line, which will furnish a brief chronological synopsis of key events in the artist's life and the environment's history. If you need a guide on how to produce an oral history, the American Association for State and Local History, Suite 102, 172 Second Ave. N., Nashville, Tenn. 37201, (615) 255-2971, publishes a variety of materials on the subject and can provide a list of its publications.

WHO CAN HELP YOU SAVE A SITE To supplement the information SPACES suggests you gather prior to any preservation efforts, the following is a list of individuals and organizations at local and state levels that you should contact. Select those individuals and organizations that are most applicable to the particular needs of the artist and the site. Contact with the ftrst group listed should be initiated immediately. Above all, do not be overwhelmed. Retain your sense of humor and perseverance. Letters of support from any of these individuals and organizations will help obtain

recognition for the artist and promote preservation of the site:

1. Local service organizations and resources - contact immediately Certain groups wield political and economic power. Arts service organizations could act as advocates, and are also attractive because they have their own accountants and lawyers; rustoric preservation groups can provide expert advice; the chamber of commerce, an amalgam of local businesspeople, could also be a funding source; celebrities, politicians (including the mayor, city councilmembers, and county government personnel) and other public figures can serve as eloquent and powerful spokespersons.

Some of the most fruitful outlets for advertising the needs of the artist and the environment are the media, including publications (local newspapers and statewide magazines), television, and local radio stations.

Local universities and/or community colleges may provide contact persons in departments such as architecture (where you could find someone to draw a site plan), art, folklore, or geography.

Other organizations are sources of prospective volunteers: churches, civic organizations (e.g. the Boy Scouts, Foxfire, Gray Panthers); other service organizations (e.g. Civilian Conservation Corps); Local businesses, foundations, and corporations may be interested in funding local, state, or national projects.

For ongoing site maintenance, construction trade workers can estimate the cost of restoration and/or the extent of structural damage, or perhaps restore the site. (Verify their qualifications: certification is required of private contractors hired by the state to work on a cultural resource.)

Pat Arrera Mr. & Mrs. Prulip Berman Roger Berry Diane Buck Elaine Calzolari Kati Cas ida Jim Coates Erica L. Fiedler April Foster Jill Fox Wendy Frieze Ann Gillen Alice Gordy Sydney K. Hamburger Mags Harries Ralph Helmick J. David Joyce James McBeth Sally Nelson Marlene Park Julius Rosenwald III Robert Schwarz Consuelo Underwood Rose Ellen Vasquez Jacqueline Wall Cynthia Wei se Samuel Welch

3. State government offices and arts agencies These offices and agencies can help pinpoint individuals and/or documentation assisting preservation efforts: the state chamber of commerce, office of tourism, library and archives, department of parks and recreation, architectural associations, and folklore/folklife departments.

4. Other In the longer term you may want to contact: local and county libraries that may serve as resources for, or repositories of, a site archive; museums, galleries, art centers; and individual s with site documentation (slides, photographs, tapes, and other unpubli shed material).

STATE ARTS SUPPORT Familiarize yourself with the types of art support programs in your state, which can fund restoration of the site or provide names of individual s and/or organizations who can. Check if your state is one of the fortunate few to have a "Percent for Art Program." This kind of program can facilitate funding, documentation, preservation, and restoration work, particularly if a folk art environment could be deemed an appropriate location for a park.

SPACES will continue to help. The organization has an impressive record of advocacy, public education, documentation and preservation, and its methods can be adopted by other groups across the country. SPACES ' success in preserving folk art environments has practical application to preserving other kinds of site-specific and public art.

Indeed, these tactics may be all that stand between these magic places and destruction.

2. State and federal government

Enjoy!

The support of politically powerful individuals can help hasten the restoration and preservation of an environment: the governor; secretary of state; state senators; and local representatives.

For further information, or if you wish to become a member of SPACES, please write: SPACES, 1804 N. Van Ness, Los Angeles, Calif. 90028, (213) 463-1629 .

Š SPACES, 1991 PUBLIC ART REVIEW SPRING SUMMER 1991 25

continued from page 18 better centerpiece/transition. The overlapping grid forms also promise a richer moire effect when viewed from passing vehicles.

Brick has been added around the marsh edge, to establish the continuous perimeter of the site. City arborist Buffy Brownstein has advised on planting selections and developed a maintenance plan for the project.

Cost, feasibility, and considerations of public use have all come into play, but in ways that have not, in the team's view, compromised the project.

The design proceeds in large measure from the urban design issues framing the site - how it will be seen from the car or the metro station, experienced by local office-workers and passersby, traversed by pedestrians. The archaeology and geology of the site itself suggested the organizing feature of the marsh, as if the surface had been pulled back to reveal its past (and at an early point one wall of the box culvert as well). The continuous history and current reality of development along King Street, and the attendant desire to accommodate socialization at the site suggested another organizing feature, the grid, and its expression in the trellis shelters built of contemporary construction materials. The hat! prow/plow almost literally knits together the natural and man-made zones with a sinuous form expressed in the traditional topiary of Southern gardens. George Washington's hat suggests a wonderfully human monumental gesture, in answer to the austere and abstract form of the Masonic temple on the hill behind.

It could be observed that the park design draws on the traditional array of geographic, historical, and mercantile references normally found depicted and personified in the formal seals and official emblems adopted by cities. Here, though, the component elements are released from the confines of a rigid symbolic tableau to animate a new public space with multiple associations and constantly renewing relationships between past and present. Both eclectic and visionary, the new park design both establishes a vision for a new public space in Alexandria and proposes a new means of collaboratively arriving at that vision.

Patricia Fuller is a Boston-based independent consultant who advises on public art.

Alexandria Marsh and Gardens: Alexandria., Va. Project Design Team: Lewis "Buster" Simpson and Laura Sindell, visual artists, Mark Spitzer, architect, Becca Hansen, landscape architect Client: King Street Task Force, Alexandria, Virginia.

The task force is a coalition of development and community interests focused on the rapidly changing area around the new King Street metro station.

The design selection and approval process has been coordinated by a steering committee with representa· tion from the Alexandria Commission for the Arts, Alexandria Park and Recreation Commission, key developers, and community activists.

Funding: A construction budget of $300,000; augmented by grants received from the NEA ($30,000) and from the Virginia Commission for the Arts ($25,000) for design development and project implementation costs. In addition, over $50,000 in in· kind services and donations has come from community businesses and individuals.

Site: A 3,000 square·foot·triangular parcel at a major intersection in downtown Alexandria, surrounded by new development and directly across from the King Street metro station. At the other end of King Street, and visible from the site, is Old Town Alexandria, a landmark historic district.

Advisors: Warren T. Byrd, Jr, landscape architect and chair, Division of Landscape Architecture, Division of Architecture, University of Virginia; Linda Hartigan, Curator, National Museum of American Art; and Ned Rifkin, Chief Curator of Exhibitions at the Hirshhom Museum Sculpture Garden.

Public Art Consultant: Patricia Fuller, Patricia Fuller & Associates, Boston, Mass.

26 PUBLIC ART REVIEW

continued from page 17 For we also animate places with stories, making those places ours through the telling. Some of the stories are historical, some mythical. Both reinforce our capacity to imagine, and to engage in the passing on is to become part of the experience of the place. This is the tender recapitulation of familiarity and the reclamation of some power of locality as the archaeology, history, architecture, natural history, and the social and cultural present.

Emotional attachment to place is consistently marginalized by the professionals, because we can't put a money value on it and we don't know how to make equations to incorporate it. This is simply not good enough. We have to retrieve it, to make it part of the way in which we make decisions.

Science has, until recently, found it had to deal with paradox, contradiction, ambivalence, and tension, yet this is the world we live in, this is the tendency in our personalities and our social orders, this is why it is so difficult to grow up and to organize ourselves benignly. We seem to be trapped in the pedantry of "facts" and "objectivity ," forgetting that we called them into existence to help us, not to rule us. Our cities and suburbs may need topographers to describe, historians and economists to analyze, planners to synthesize, and so on, but if we allow power and logic alone to make places, the likelihood of conceiving meaningless spaces is high.

If we are to plan and intervene successfully we must reclaim those difficult, intangible, and elusive aspects of our relations with places from the margins of professional activity, we must embrace the poetic, and we must include people.

The arts offer ways of demonstrating and explaining ourselves and the world which can embrace complicated subjectivity, values, emotion, and offer rich positive potential for stating and exploring enigma and dilemma. The arts can help us see and make places: distinctive, particular, provocative places, places we want to be in, places we want to share.

If we are to create a dynamic to succeed in responding to the challenges that we have laid down for ourselves in the 20thcentury city we shall need all the imagination, spirit, and humanity we can muster.

These must be the engines of change, holding ecology and economics in the palm of their hand. The most exciting aspiration is not to turn people on to the "art" of "environment," but to trigger the imagination, fire enthusiasm, and encourage exuberant expression of a deeper cultural need for nature, for poetry, for social discourse, and satisfying places.

Sue Clifford is a founding director and coordinator of Common Ground.

COMMON GROUND can be contacted at 45 Shelton St., London WC2H 9HJ

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I 'S

TIN

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Opportunities

Position Ruailable

Public Art Program. University of Arizona Tucson, Ariz.

Visual Arts Coordinator Oregon Arts Commission Salem, Ore.

The University of Arizona has developed a public art program in conjunction with seven major building projects. Opportunities for existing pieces, the creation of new site-specific works, and, in some cases collaborations with architects. interested artists should submit a resume, representative slides (about 10 slides with descriptions), and collaborative experience if any.

Submission Deadline: Dec. 31, 1991 Eligibility: Open Selection Process: Submissions will be evaluated by a university committee for artistic merit and appropriateness of artist's work to specific locations.

Write or Call: Peter Bermingham, Director University of Arizona Museum of Art, Speedway and Olive, Tucson, Ariz. 85721 (602) 621-7567.

Creative Time CityWide Projects New York, N.Y. Creative Time is interested in hearing about and sponsoring visual and performing artists' and architects' ideas as part of its ongoing CityWide project series.

Projects are encouraged to address current issues relating to communities and community residents, exploring areas that bridge cultures, ideologies, and disciplines.

Submission Deadline: Open Eligibility: Open to all professional artists.

Selection Process: Proposals are reviewed every 2 to 3 months.

Write or call: Creative Time, 66 W. Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10007, (212) 619-1955.

Neighborhood Gateways Project Minneapolis, Minn.

The Minneapolis Arts Commission has announced a new public art initiative for the city: The Neighborhood Gateways Project. Funded by "1% for the Arts,' the project will produce gateways at distinct points of entry to Minneapolis neighborhoods. The Neighborhood Gateways Project will create significant works of public art and unique design in a variety of forms and structures.

Submission Deadline: Unconfirmed. Write or call for proposals.

Eligibility: Write or call: Arts Commission Office, 350 S. Rfth St., Room 323M City Hall, Minneapolis, Minn. 55415-13n, (612) 673-3006.

MSAIA Annual Convention and Product Exposition Minneapolis, Minn.

Nov. 13,14, and 15 The Minnesota Society of the American Institute of Architects will be holding its 57th Annual Convention and Product Exposition on Nov. 13, 14, and 15, at the Minneapolis Convention Center, Minneapolis. This will be an opportunity to hear national speakers, attend seminars and view the newest product exhibits.

For more information write or call: Judith Van Dyne, Director of Marketing, MSAIA, 275 Market Street, Suite 54, Minneapolis, Minn. 55405.

(612) 338-6763.

S

Visual Arts Coordinator, Oregon Arts Commission, Salem Ore. Starts at $29,782; generous benefits.

Responsible for Percent for Art in Public Places program. Require four years professional level experience with public programs; strong background in visual arts, including design and architecture; knowledge and understanding of public art programs.

Send cover letter, application, resume and three professional references to: Visual Arts Coordinator Search, Oregon Arts Commission, 835 Summer Street N.E., Salem, Ore. 97301.

Deadline: May 24,1991

[ourses~ [lasses~ Workshops Reading the Landscape: linking Arts and the Environment WoH Ridge Environment Learning Center, Finland, Minn.

June 17·21 Week-long residential workshop, sponsored by the Minnesota Center for Arts in Education and Hamline University, Graduate Continuing Studies Program, for teachers and arts and science specialists, grades K-9, to develop written thematic curriculum linking arts and the environment.

For more information contact: Georgia Loughren, Hamline University Continuing Studies Program, 1536 Hewitt Ave. St. Paul, Minn. 55104-1284, (612) 641-2008.

What's 'oinq On PSA: Public Service Art The Public Art Fund Inc. sponsored four public artworks through the PSA: Public Service Art exhibition series: Ann Meridith's subway posters addressing women and AIDS, Barbara Kruger's bus shelter posters dealing with the issue of reproductive rights, Gran Fury's bus shelter posters on the alarming statistics on the treatment of women with AIDS, and the Guerrilla Girls' billboard project addressing the current threat of censorship and a woman's right to choose. The Public Art Fund is dedicated to securing a place for artwork within the urban landscape.

For more information, write: Public Art Fund, 1285 Ave. of Americas, Third Floor New York, N.Y., 10019-6071 The National Campaign for Freedom of Expression The National Campaign for Freedom of Expression is a coalition of artists, artists' organizations and individuals who believe in the inalienable right of artists, and of all Americans, to freedom of expression. Some of the NCFE's activities to date include; lobbying members of Congress concerning NEA Reauthorization, conducting informational press conferences on arts issues, artists and organizations under attack, and monitoring NEA funding decisions and censorship incidents.

For more information call or write: NCFE, Creative Time, 66 W. Broadway, New York, N.Y., 10007, (212) 619-1995.

Annual Outdoor Sculpture Competition Send slides, resume, and SASE for entry in this juried competition sponsored by Miami U. (Ohio). Winner will beinvited to the campus for four days; an honorarium and travel expenses provided. Deadline May 30, 1990.

Miami U. Outdoor Sculpture Department of Art, School of Fine Arts Oxford, Oh., 45056 (513) 529-6010

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» Providing advisory and management services for public art competitions.

» Promoting and marketing to artists. » Selecting and recruiting juries. » Managing communications, judgings and exhibitions.

For more information about FORECASTs professional public art services Write or call Julie Marckel: Projects Manager

. FORECAST I PUBLIC ARTWORKS

FORECAST Public Artworks 2955 Bloomington Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55407

, FORECAST Public Artworks 2955 Bloominglon Avenue Soulh Minneapolis, MN 55407-1415

Non-Profit Org. U.S. Postage PAID Minneapolis, MN Permit #2382