The definition of sculpture is expanding to include traditional forms and works including performance, video, installation art, public art, and more. IS Day is a great way to engage with sculpture and its power in communities.

As a Board Member of ISC and a Public Artist, I am participating in IS Day by dedicating Aurora Bright Dawn. This Public Artwork combines space, color and form on an aging pedestrian bridge, promoting community connectivity and safe crossing. This project, made possible by a grant from the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT), improves pedestrian mobility.

The Aurora Licton Urban Village (ALUV) wrote the grant seeking an Artist to promote identity on Aurora Avenue, a state highway that divides their community.

The challenge to humanize this space was a tall order. Working with the community, our Team determined that the bridge presented the best opportunity for creating a neighborhood landmark, supporting ALUV’s goals.

We brought meaning to the bridge by selecting colors related to the name of the highway and the community. Aurora, from Latin, means dawn and inspired the sunrise

palette. Licton, from the Lushootsheed, Liq’tid, means reddish mud, and Springs, from the Germanic, springen, means head of a well, inspired the water colors.

Because the sun arcs over the bridge’s East/West alignment, our Team decided to work with light and color, using KodaXT, a durable colorfast polycarbonate. The brightly colored fins glow in sunlight. We painted the railing orange, a dominant color along the route. These nuances of color, form and shadow, promote perceptual experience. I have noticed people taking photographs of the fins and themselves. Before it was dull and drab, now it is a new destination.

Once the design work completed, we realized that the area surrounded by the ramp was barren. I approached a local Lowes for a donation of daffodil bulbs. They generously offered us daffodils at cost, and I purchased them for ALUV. We engaged the community in a planting project, requiring public participation and stewardship. The community cleared the site and planted 1,700 bulbs.

On March 21st, the first day of spring, they bloomed. This connection with community, site and the ongoing stewardship of this project is how Public Art and Sculpture affect communities in profound ways.

Public Art transforms neighborhoods by promoting community values, fostering pride of ownership, social interaction, and a sense of belonging. All communities deserve safe and supportive environments. IS Day is about reflecting on all that Art and Sculpture bring into our lives, enriching our experiences and our optimism for the future.

First published on the AFTA ARTSBLOG
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House for Summer 20th anniversary performance, 2007.

Struggling up the hillside in 100 degree temperatures, I peered through the dusty firs and pines, to see a small cluster of birch trees. If they appear out of place even within the variety of species represented in the Hoyt Arboretum in Portland, Oregon, that is because they are— these trees are part of a living sculpture called House for Summer created by artist Helen Lessick.

House for Summer 30th anniversary event with artist (lower left in blue) and tree.

This house was hard to find. I walked from one of the many parking lots in the surrounding Washington Park, up a maze of paths, across a street, down around a cell phone relay station, and through a picnic pavilion filled with wedding attendees. It turned out to be relatively close to the visitor’s center, but off one of many forking paths, marked with many signs, but none referring to Lessick’s work.

This sculpture was planted in 1987, and this summer marked its 30th anniversary. Lined up so that the “residents” of the house can view the summer solstice sunset, many years have seen the artist conduct performances at the house on that day. In images, these performances show the trees at different stages of their growth.

House for Summer (photo in winter 1989).

The Himalayan Birch are not large, at least not compared to the cedars and Douglas Fir of the rest of the park. But they are certainly growing. As I crest the hill and finally lay eyes on the sculpture, I see that it is occupied. A group of youths has established residence, and tied a hammock up inside the tree, held easily between the ample trunks. I can hear their laughter, and smell the smoke from their Saturday afternoon’s recreation drifting out through the hot air between the green birch leaves.

House for Summer (photo summer solstice 1996).

 

From this angle, the sculpture looks out of place, like any house in the woods. But it isn’t so much the type of tree, as it is their placement. Trees don’t grow so close together, unless planted that way. But that is what makes it a house, and not a collection of plants, even though it is both at the same time. Any house is also planted— from wood also arranged unnaturally, that will change and grow over the decades, even if it is lumber at that point, rather than saplings.

I leave the teenagers be, and continue down the hill, leaving their privacy in the house in intact. I wonder how long they will remain there, before they pack up their hammock, and drift away, out of the heat, to somewhere even cooler than their current shady spot. From behind a set of willows, the house is invisible, unfindable, once more.

Photo credit: City of Chicago

Few cities do public art as well as Chicago.  Place the point of a giant compass at the intersection of State and Madison, and a circle with a radius of about 1,000 yards will encompass works by Calder, Picasso, Dubuffet, Chagall, Miro, Richard Hunt, Jaume Plensa and Anish Kapoor. Through April 2018, a public installation of sculptures by artist Chakaia Booker fills the Boeing Gallery, a comfortably shaded outdoor promenade that runs the length of Chicago’s Millennium Park.  These seven steel and rubber sculptures manage to remain lighthearted and invitingly interactive, though much of Chakaia Booker’s oeuvre is freighted with poignant allusions to race, class, and social mobility.    

Rubber is an urban, industrial medium, and much of the rubber Booker uses comes from old tires, which, scarred and worn, betray suggestions of their histories prior to being re-purposed as art.  For Booker, this wear and tear is a metaphor for physical and emotional scarring resultant from one’s class, race, or occupation.  She also views the tire as a symbol for social mobility; not only does its very shape imply movement, but, particularly in America, cars are an especially visible expression of social and economic status.

Photo credit: City of Chicago

Here in Millennium Park, in the absence of any sort of curatorial statement (or even corresponding titles) viewers must approach these sculptures on their own terms.  Somehow, Booker takes industrial found material and manages to achieve something akin to what Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth did in highly-polished bronze, wood, or marble; these sinuous, organic forms accent their surrounding environments, the negative spaces within her sculptures unobtrusively and gracefully framing the world that surrounds them.

By design, her work invites interaction: children crawl through their crevices, viewers pose inside them, and nearly everyone that walks by touches them.  Take-Out, a sort of monumental picture-frame, seems to have been created with Instagram in mind; it’s exceptionally popular among passers-by, who pose for snapshots and selfies, framed by its floppy tendrils.  And curious viewers frequently reach out to settle in their minds whether the feathery membrane of Gridlock is indeed rubber.  Booker welcomes such interactions.

Photo credit: City of Chicago

Chakaia Booker isn’t too concerned about how viewers interpret her work, although some of her sculptures indeed have very specific sources (Pass the Buck, for example, was inspired by Madam C. J. Walker, a prominent African-American millionaire, philanthropist, and social activist), preferring instead for viewers to come up with their own associations.  These could range from the sordid history of the rubber industry to nostalgic childhood memories of tire-swings and playgrounds.

Any art in the Boeing gallery space faces the formidable task of competing with iconic works like Jaume Plensa’s immensely popular Crown Fountain and Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate (very possibly the most Instagrammed public sculpture in the Midwest), both just a stone’s throw away.  But, visually appealing and eminently accessible, Booker’s sculptures certainly hold their own, their rough-hewn, patchwork surfaces contributing an element of handicraft missing from the park’s other sculptures.  Furthermore, while Chakaia Booker’s art is comfortably at home in relatively hushed, sacrosanct spaces of New York’s Metropolitan Art Museum, her work also admirable delivers an elegant beauty to the masses in the vernacular, industrial, working-class medium of recycled rubber, situated here in this shady oasis just a few steps away from the bustle and traffic of Chicago’s perennially high-decibel Michigan Avenue.

Tom Pfannerstill, Heads Installation. Photo by George Robb.

The billboard project does not have the conventional markers of public art. It’s not put out to tender, heavily funded or permanently sited; the images that temporarily dot the roads of East Belfast are not even made with this format or their location in mind. Instead, they are snapshots of artists’ practices, blown up and quietly slipped into the public sphere for a few weeks at a time.

An expansive yet physically low-key intervention, it’s got an incidental quality, maybe catching the attention of commuters stuck in traffic or pedestrians on their daily routes. There’s no statement of its basis or any titles or names in this summer’s iteration of the project, but to a passing observer perhaps there’s a sense of something bubbling up to the surface, and a pattern forming over the past six years.

Stephen Millar and Nathan Crothers, The Useless Made Useful (Tory Sandbags). Photo by George Robb.

 

The billboard project is repeated in this part of the city every year or two, under the “Art is the Eastside” title, and develops with each new edition. Creative Exchange , an artist-led studio in the area that founded on an ethos of artistic provision and cross-pollination, started the project in 2009. The initial aim was to bring the work of the studios to a wide audience rather than expecting people to arrive to them, and has since expanded and condensed in numbers to be awash on the streets or more subtly present, at times given an observable theme or stood individually. This year, twenty invited artists align with their twentieth anniversary activities, a selection recognizing past collaborations and ongoing working relationships. Four billboards of wishes written on blackboards join these pieces, each selected from the Wish Tree Forest, a coinciding public collaboration.

In the ongoing development of the billboard project, the studio group’s long-term, active interest in the area is visible and emphasized – particularly significant in a part of Belfast hit hard by the loss of industry and with little (but growing) creative presence. They may be long-term stakeholders in the area, but in the wake of many dilapidated community arts projects that line the footpaths, it makes sense that the project embraces a transitory, intermittent nature.

Jill Quigley, The Piggery. Photo by George Robb.

 

A previous project used the theme “Green”: contentiously associative in a predominantly Protestant area, but also a reference to the use of nature as a regenerative tool, such as in the Comber greenway and the establishment of community farms.The art may not be produced for the location, but neither is irrelevant to it, or dropped in without reason; its relationship to place is subtle but valuable to its effect, from simply echoing colours to finding a shared point of reference in East Belfast. Significance of locale is not hammered home but allowed to quietly exist, along with some of the nuance that art needs.

Colin McGookin, Our Father in the Theatre of Dreams. Photo by George Robb.

 

This year, for example, an image from Kentucky artist Tom Pfannstill’s Head Installation on a large junction evokes vulnerability and isolation within a crowd. Meanwhile, Stephen Millar and Nathan Crothers’ The Useless made Useful, a sandbag installation stencilled with the British government Tory cabinet in reference to the poor flood response in England, is intentionally sited near repeated spots of flooding within Belfast. An image of Short Strand, one of David Fox’s paintings of people-less territorial thresholds in the city, sits adjacent to one such area on its billboard, and Colin McGookin’s Our Father In the Theatre of Dreams has the composition and reverent symbolism that recalls the many political murals in the area, yet is a deeply personal tribute to his father.

Overall these twenty artists’ practices span painting, photography, film stills, performance, sculpture and more, but no matter what the origins of the image, they gain a cross-disciplinary quality. Compared to the directness of advertising, the image is more slowly absorbed and vulnerable, unsupported by the rest of the artist’s practice and open to a vastly different interpretation. The incentive here is not “sprucing up the place” or instilling positivity and pride, like in regeneration-based arts or the painting over of old political murals: it’s art’s statement of its own presence and position here, with no pre-requisite needed.

By Dorothy Hunter

Left: the infographics of the central panel of “Desert Feud” mural by D. Ross “Scribe” located at Foxx Equipment in Kansas City, Missouri. In many cases, the information given to viewers about a Pokestop is missing, incorrect or incomplete. After some simple research more information about the artist was located. Center: View of the area in the Pokemon Go app including “Desert Feud” as a Pokestop. Right: Image of “Desert Feud” by D. Ross “Scribe” in Kansas City.

It’s estimated that Pokemon Go has already peaked in users but some estimates put daily users still around 20 million in the United States alone. At the time of writing this, less than a month has passed since Niantic Labs, Pokemon and Nintendo dropped a bomb on the world in the form of the smartphone app and game. Nintendo’s stock prices have skyrocketed along with news stories involving the app and its users with buzzwords like “augmented reality” – the combination of a virtual world with the physical. Pokemon trainers, the term for people searching for Pokemon to capture and evolve, are easily spotted walking with faces in their cell phones or gathered around physical locations important to the game. The app has already displayed its great potential in exposing millions of new users to public art throughout the country and a possibility for significant cultural mapping systems used by artists, museum and municipalities.

One of the main features of Pokemon Go is the pokestop, a physical landmark within the real world that trainers must visit to collect goodies needed to play, especially pokeballs, the contraption for capturing Pokemon. Gyms are usually even more prominent landmarks established to allow trainers to train amongst their teammates or battle other teams to build up experience points and become higher level trainers. If you are lost at this point, there’s little to worry about but understand that besides locating the Pokemon creatures scattered throughout the world, the pokestops and gyms are integral to the game and is usually where one will find users en masse. These locations are usually located at culturally significant locations; among them are parks, interesting architectural buildings, historical landmarks and public art.

Left: Pokemon Go app view of Edison High School and Jackson Square Park located in northeast Minneapolis. The blue posts indicate the location of Pokestops that trainers discover to gather the game’s essential tools. Right: Edison High School and Jackson Square Park seen from the same location as the left image.

 

So how were the locations of the Pokestops and gyms established? Although Niantic Labs, the company behind the actual development of Pokemon Go has been quiet on technical details for obvious reasons, there is a fascinating history with CEO John Hanke. Hanke joined the Google team in 2004, was behind the launch of Google Earth and the placement of Google Maps on the iPhone in 2005. His interest in maps and along with Google cofounder Sergei Brin helped pave the way for developing more apps that would encourage users to interact with their surroundings, including historical sites and museums. In 2012 Niantic developed a game called Ingress which is very similar to Pokemon Go and requested players to submit locations for portals, the pokestop predecessor. With such a strong database established over four years these locations, paired with Google Maps and other geospatial applications and programming set the foundation for Pokemon Go.

Artist James Brenner was commissioned by the city of Minneapolis in 2009 to create “In Flux” seen here.The three images are each Pokestops located near the Edison High School and Jackson Square Park in Minneapolis. The city does a great job in adding proper information to its public art so additional information, including artist, title and date, can be gathered by interested viewers.

 

As of September 2016, pokestops and gyms can be deleted by request but no new locations are being added, much to the chagrin of new users who don’t live near a pokestop or gym. The app shows the locations on an interactive map and users must navigate actual roads, traffic, buildings and other obstacles to find the locations. This has lead to a significant number of users discovering sites around their neighborhoods and city that were overlooked or lost before and is where public art can benefit greatly. Unfortunately, Niantic’s closed request system means that artists, businesses and municipalities that could benefit from additional coverage or information are left with what was established without their knowledge. Much of the artwork has information missing, incomplete or incorrect, but as always, we’ll take what we can get.

Left: View of the Memorial Park area in Odessa, Texas from Pokemon Go app including several Pokestops and a gym. The Pokestops here are all bronze sculptures that are maintained by city’s Department of Parks and Recreation. Right: A bronze sculpture and overview of Memorial Park in Odessa.

 

Pokemon Go will obviously fade as time goes on but perhaps what can be taken from the experience is a way to engage people who do not seek out art and culturally significant sites. Whether this goes back to Google and Hanke’s original visions of simply getting people out to see these places, combining augmented reality into these visits or something still to be thought of, Pokemon Go is an exciting entrance into even more possibilities for the arts, even if hidden behind the legendary Moltres, Articuno and Zapdos for now.

By Jake Weigel

Intrude by Amanda Parer Photo courtesy Ness Vanderburgh.

Boston is experiencing a bold moment for public art due to many long term planning projects coming to fruition and a new political climate that favors the arts. One example is the recent installation by the Australian artist, Amanda Parer. Her five monumental inflatable rabbit sculptures titled “Intrude” appeared in late July at the newly minted outdoor space, called the Lawn on D. Located in South Boston, adjacent to the new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, this ArtLAB is fast becoming a go to place for pop up cultural life in the heart of the city.

 
Intrude by Amanda Parer Photo courtesy Rodney Campbell.

Due to the digital buzz surrounding “Intrude” it drew a huge crowd and free parking was nearly a mile away, but the installation did not disappoint. Over 10,000 people saw the event over its four day exhibition in Boston but at least 5000 were there on the night we went, enjoying the beer garden, the live music and the swings as a backdrop to the centerpiece: “Intrude.” It was a great turn out for a public art event. The giant inflatable rabbits were lit from within. At a monumental scale, their gestures of preening, standing on their hind legs and laying down took on a life of their own. Intrigued, I set out to find out how these rabbits came to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and to learn more about the Australian artist Amanda Parer.

I met with Kate Gilbert, Curator of The Lawn on D ArtLAB, a program of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA) that is managed by HR&A Advisors, to learn more about the project.  The area was developed as a temporary public green space by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority with a budget of 2.2 million dollars for The Lawn on D and related programming for the 2015 season (this includes the artLAB). For the past 18 months, the dynamic duo Chris Wangro, HR& A programming consultant, “Impresario” and Creative Director for The Lawn on D, and Kate Gilbert, have brought in cutting edge installations such as “Swingtime” and “Pentalum” as well as exciting installations by local artists Tory Fair and Steed Taylor. “Intrude” is Wangro’s third successful project. Notable for the use of light and space, each project has had a unique focus on play and inviting the audience to engage with their bodies. Chris and I spoke on the phone and he told me more about his role working with the MCCA, his background in producing spectacles, parades and festivals, and his particular fascination with inflatables. In order to run art projects on this scale in Boston, he has reached out to partners in other cities.

Intrude by Amanda Parer Photo courtesy Lawn On D ArtLAB

Whether you approach the giant rabbits of Amanda Parer as Easter lawn ornaments, archetypal fertility objects or larger than life cartoon characters that sprang to life from a Beatrix Potter novel, there is something very compelling about the sculptures that resonates with audiences on a global scale. “Intrude” first appeared at The Vivid Festival of Light in Sydney Australia in 2014. Since then they have traveled to London, UK; Ghent, Belgium; Gothenburg,Sweden and Paris, France. Accessible with their familiar forms, and soft surfaces, the rabbits are expertly crafted at factories in China.  Each sculpture incorporates fans inside the inflatable structures to keep them continuously blown up. Also hidden from view is their light sources and their 500 kg sandbags inside each one that holds them down.

What I learned from speaking with Amanda Parer is that due to the popularity of “Intrude” the artist has fabricated 3 editions of the rabbits: one that travels exclusively in Australia, one for Europe and one for the USA. Boston was very honored to be the first stop on the forthcoming USA tour planned for 2016 in New York, Houston, Denver and Los Angeles courtesy of ArtsBrookfield. The tour will be sponsored by Brookfield Office Properties, one of the largest developers of commercial space in the world, who also played a major role in bringing the rabbits to Boston. Chris Wangro brought Amanda Parer’s work to the attention of Brookfield, who was able to bring her work to the USA.

Amanda Parer graduated from art school feeling confident of her skills but unsure of what she had to say as an artist in her work. When she had the opportunity to travel to the Galapagos Islands with her uncle, David Parer, it opened her eyes to the diversity of species on the planet in an isolated environment. This tour became pivotal in her intellectual and aesthetic development as an artist.

Intrude by Amanda Parer Photo courtesy Ness Vanderburgh.

In Australia, the rabbits are not a native species. They were introduced by Europeans to the continent in the 18th century. In much the same way that white settlers negatively impacted the indigenous populations, the rabbits have “intruded” on the natural landscape of Australia. Every year they cause millions of dollars in crop damage. Unlike the USA, whose land has been heavily farmed, forested and engineered to meet human needs, the landscape of Australia and Tasmania where Amanda grew up is largely untouched, making the havoc that  these feral  rabbits wreak on the environment that much more dramatic. The installation of five monumental inflatable rabbits embraces both the light, fun-filled side of these creatures, and the darker overtones that the sight of these creatures implies. “Intrude” is a way of bringing serious environmental concerns into public space for dialogue and thoughtful engagement with the hope of making the world a better place.

In conclusion, I believe local arts organizations and institutions have a two-fold mission: to bring in world-class art and to provide a platform for local artists at all levels of their careers. The first provides world-class cultural experiences for the city and the second creates deep civic pride. Thankfully, Boston has Kate Gilbert and Chris Wangro, two sensitive, deeply ambitious and persuasive curators raising the bar for Boston public art projects. One can only wonder what these two will dream up next?

By Donna Dodson

You can catch Amanda Parer’s “Intrude” installation at Kosice & Batislava, Slovakia in Oct. 2015 and the forthcoming USA tour planned for 2016 in New York, Houston, Denver and Los Angeles courtesy of ArtsBrookfield.

Amanda Parer on Social Media:

@AmandaParer, Instagram – https://instagram.com/amandaparer/ – #AmandaParer

Films of Karen and Claire drawing. Photograph by Simon Mills.

One never really sees a monument in a contemporary sense – more often they are physical follow-ups, bookending past time and space. Their lack of immediate relevance and dynamism allow them to be comfortably ignored as evidence of dues paid and boxes ticked.

In Sculpture in the Expanded Field, written for October magazine in 1978, Rosalind Krauss takes the work of Rodin as an example of the disassociation between sculptures and monuments. Before, they shared a “logic (as) commemorative representation. (Sculpture) sits in a particular place and speaks in a symbolical tongue about the meaning or use of that place.” According to Krauss, Gates of Hell and a statue of Balzac “failed” as monuments for both now exist only as many different versions within museums, with none at their originally intended site due to environmental unsuitability and high subjectivity. For these works, a lack of specific place was akin to entering a modernist state as sculpture, only “passing through” a monumental state – “producing the monument as abstraction, the monument as pure marker or base, functionally placeless and largely self-referential”.

 
Detail of built monument. Photograph by simon Mills

Whilst sculpture has evolved through this fracturing from place and representation, monumentality has remained steadfastly sited. It needs the anchor of time and place to function in the way we perceive it should – that is, to denote or connote something specific. Whilst a monument can be visually abstract, it still needs the equation-like approach of what it truly represents, perhaps broken down into handy symbolic pieces for easy digestion. As a form that continues to follow its prescript function, the traditional monument remains true to architectural modernist principles today – sculpture, meanwhile, has not been so stunted.

If we shift the monument’s arena from the public space to the art space, however, the form is more malleable. Whilst sculpture is not of the same process as the monument, can physical monuments become something other than a sculptural object? What happens when we move away from the product, into a process-based look at a monument and its inherent relationships?

A Collaboration Monument is a project that explores such issues. Created by the Icelandic-Swedish artist duo Orn Alexander Ámundason and Olof Nimar, its collaboration is not ultimately between the two artists: working relationships are employed and layered, and then repeated. Formula is still implicit in these monuments, but as a course of action rather than a visual and conceptual encoder.

The power dynamics of this process are interesting in their footing and ambiguity.  First, a “surrogate” from their host city is fed instructions via audio link to draw and erase vague marks and specific shapes, creating a picture through the artists’ commands. These drawings are then sent to a local architect to be interpreted into specific objects, materials and dimensions for a monument. This is then built, created or commissioned by the artists.

The project has been staged in Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, and most recently in Belfast. Whilst the formula remains the same, the implicit reasoning behind the monument’s surrogates, and fate of the monument, have varied – one surrogate had seen a ghost, whilst another was a member of a band, who ended up touring with the final monument on stage. In Belfast identical twins Claire and Karen Gibson were used as surrogates, each being fed the same information successively, in an at times contradictive way by the artists. Local set designer Stephen Bamford then interpreted the information into a plan, which was built by the artists and gallery in the space.

Installation shot of built monument, photograph by Simon Mills

 

At a closer look the latter process has a dark humour. Identical twins as complementary “drawing tools” echo scientific and physiological studies, where matching genes assure a controlled experiment. The twins are further tokenised as being selected nationals of the host country, yet of no representative social demographic, and no real power to create beyond interpreting the fed instructions – none of which are justified or explained. No one claims to be an ambassador for anyone, anything, or any time. Nothing in the room, physical or drawn, requires a conceptual justification – it is an illustrated chain of command, of subtle supremacy yet also of letting go of control in ongoing reinterpretation.

Making a plan from the drawings becomes a more inherently creative act. Yet as 3D designers are employed, the plans are formed in a different field than the artists would work – moving between information structures, contexts and working sensibilities, information is lost and added. The ambiguity of language and pencil-on-paper is replaced with exact heights of wood and specified products from local shops, paradoxically a little surreal in its specific form.

The ongoing disassociation from the work is like an artistic safety net – ticking boxes for working in the public realm, the final product is something that deliberately alludes to but ultimately represents nothing, as the temporary monument that was initiated rather than tendered. It is a loaded, physical thing we don’t have to be precious about, which in a few weeks is taken down, scrapped or repurposed, or sited elsewhere. With no monumental anchor, or implicit political reference, the work is sculptural form that only passes through a monumental state – its fate mirror’s that of Rodin’s work, and is already sealed.

By Dorothy Hunter

About an hour and a half outside of Austin in the small town of Johnson City, TX there is a beautiful ranch nestled in the dramatic Texas hills just a few miles away from the Lyndon B. Johnson State Park and Historic Site. The property, owned by LBJ himself in the 1960s, was the home and studio of the artist Benini and his wife Lorraine from 1999 until 2014. In the fall of last year Historian Tracy N. Poe, PhD and Molecular Pharmacologist Greg F. Sullivan II, PhD bought the property and began their transition from Chicago to Texas. They are currently working on their unique vision for this spectacularly beautiful ranch. 

Through Benini’s network of artists, his own prolific making, and the addition of Poe and Sullivan’s collection, the Sculpture Ranch currently shows the work of 45 artists, 40 of whom are sculptors. Not all 143 acres of the ranch are used to show sculptures- the majority of the work is found near paths that crisscross the property. The areas where most of the sculptures are located can be accessed by car from a meandering, charming roadway that runs from the gallery up the hill to the main house.

The gallery, a 14,000 square foot Quonset hut originally built by LBJ to house his helicopters, is now a cavernously large gallery space showing work by Benini, Peter Mangan, and several others. Presently 8,000 square feet is finished gallery space and there are plans in the works to finish out the remaining 6,000 feet in the coming year. While honoring Benini’s legacy on the property, Poe and Sullivan have a very specific aspiration for the ranch. They will continue to grow the outdoor sculptural work and run the gallery space, but they also eventually plan to found an onsite residency program that brings together creative minds from all disciplines and fields to create a space that encourages collaboration and idea exchange. Poe and Sullivan met while attending Reed College, a small liberal arts college in Portland, OR, in the 1990s. Their background in the humanities and the broad variety of interesting friends from their time at Reed and beyond led them to the idea of creating a multidisciplinary residency. Be on the look out for the forthcoming residency program and plan a visit in the meantime- the Sculpture Ranch and Galleries promises to have a bright future!

By Gracelee Lawrence

For their open house information or to learn more about the Sculpture Ranch and Galleries please see http://www.sculptureranch.com.

Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum. Photos by Adam Rothstein. Courtesy of the Noah Purifoy Foundation. Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture, Joshua Tree, CA noahpurifoy.com

Outsider art is intended as a term denoting particular circles and scenes of art production, but I like to think of it in terms of art that is literally outside. Like Simon Rodia’s Watts Towers, or Leonard Knight’s Salvation Mountain, I enjoy the journey necessary to see outsider art, more than the artists’ detachment from any particular school, method, or medium. Out in the desert, or in the areas of LA where “most people don’t go” (except the people who live there, of course) art can exist apart from the institutions and gallery spaces that enable and sustain certain modes of production. Noah Purifoy’s Joshua Tree Outdoor Museum has aspects of this, although the artist himself was no outsider. Purifoy was on the California Arts Council for many years, and cofounder of the Watts Towers Art Center located next to Rodia’s work in South Central Los Angeles. There is a similar aesthetic visible in the hundreds of sculptures that live in the lots of Purifoy’s museum–the re-purposing of otherwise “garbage” materials into amalgams of creative shapes and textures, the building of mammoth, unuseable structures in a place where most architecture is distinguished by its indistinguishable monotony and utilitarian invisibleness.

Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum. Photos by Adam Rothstein. Courtesy of the Noah Purifoy Foundation. Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum of Assemblage Sculpture, Joshua Tree, CA noahpurifoy.com

 

But for me it is the journey that allies these types of work. They are out of sight, purposefully off the main road, because that is where the artists could find the space in which to work. They are constructed from material had at hand in these particular areas, salvaged from what is available. When driving out to the Outdoor Museum, one sees any number of pieces of trash along the desert roadside, scattered across a terrain where land is cheap, but the proper processing and recycling of material is not. In the twisted barbed wire fence of barely arable range land, one finds sheet plastic, shredded copper wire, discarded home appliances, and the everpresent unusable tires. One finds these items in Purifoy’s work as well, but here the items are gathered together, as if at a local dump. In the backs of the lot piles of old cafeteria trays gather dust and weeds, and the viewer is uncertain if they are meant to be a sculpture as is, if they were a sculpture that has fallen apart, or if they were a sculpture meant to be, designed in Purifoy’s head but not built by his hand.

Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum.

Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum.

It is that head and hand that changes the material gathered here, not just collected by time in the windbreak of a fence or in the gravity pit of a desert wash. The artist built these things, from trash it may be, but directing his effort to build upwards, not just collect outwards. The structures tower overhead, even the deliberate precariousness of a broken bridge over a pit of rebar signal that this was a place where someone worked, carefully, for years, attempting to shape the experience of the visitor who took the time to venture into the harsh desert and find it.

And with the journey that one makes “outside” to visit such work, one feels allied in the effort to escape, to shape one’s own experience for the better by venturing off the interstate and attempting to discover the work that someone else had done, long ago. It is archeology, as much as architecture, that draws one out to the Mojave desert to puzzle over the delicious, derelict majesty of Purifoy’s work. In June of this year, the LA County Museum of Art will temporarily move some of Purifoy’s work from the desert to their expansive urban campus. It is good that his work will gain the wider audience that the museum provides. But it will not be the same, out of the desert, and into the city.

By Adam Rothstein

Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum.

Noah Purifoy Outdoor Desert Art Museum.

Manhole Covers for Jeske Sculpture Park by Bryce Robinson

I had the chance to meet Bryce Robinson through a mutual friend and later found out that he had started Jeske Sculpture Park in his hometown of Ferguson, Missouri. The park is seven acres in the heart of the city of Ferguson, a name that drew even more interest from an outsider informed solely by the national media of the events surrounding Michael Brown’s death in 2014. What is more important was how one person could change the landscape of a community with a vision, hard work and art.

Jake Weigel: What’s the history of Jeske Park? Where did it start?

Bryce Robinson: The site is one of the first, if not the first, sites established in the city of Ferguson that was formally designated as a public park. The city of Ferguson was founded in 1890 William B. Ferguson who was a farmer and landowner who gave a chunk of his property to the Wabash Railroad to set up a train station and that become the locale for one of the first suburbs of the city of St. Louis.

At some point between 1939 and 1948, Mayor Fred Jeske set up Jeske Park, which was at the center of a new development. The vision for the park was that it remained a natural landscape. Eventually there were creeks running through it, walking paths, street lamps, baseball field and that was it. It is one of the only parks in the city of Ferguson not to have playground equipment on it.

 
Jeske Sculpture Park Exhibition Map

JW: How did Jeske Sculpture Park come into existence?

BR: There came the opportunity to propose new amenities for the existing park site in 2012. There was a meeting to determine what to do with this opportunity with 30 to 40 people in attendance. I pitched the idea of a sculpture park when it became apparent that there were to distinct sides or factions at the meeting, those for a more natural park and those for more development. A month later I presented a formal proposal to the neighborhood association. They liked it and I gave it two more times to make sure we had a full consensus. I pitched it to the parks department as recommended by the neighborhood association and then gave the presentation to the city council so they were interested in supporting it from then on.

The park was legislated into reality because we felt it was important have a formal structure for Jeske Sculpture Park and that it be recognized as a sculpture park. We wanted to do some creative infrastructure projects, some cast iron manhole covers that have the park logo or designs with embellishments. We wanted to design and commission new hand rails for the parks central bridge, and that is a project that we’re still looking at doing. We’ve talked about overhauling the backstop and doing a more sculptural designed backstop that complements the overall concept of the park.

Baskets by Elizabeth Kronfield

JW: So you’re really focusing on a cultural identity not only for Ferguson or the St. Louis area but a very specific neighborhood and the history of it.

BR: We saw this idea as a way to enhance the park in a place that people would not expect to encounter that kind of cultural experience. The city of Ferguson is located in north St. Louis county and is perceived by many people in St. Louis as being lower income, being less affluent, primarily African-American and as a place that is avoided in many regards by the wealthy and the white. For me, this was something special that we can boast about and build upon as part of our identity.

JW: Once you had the approval, how did you develop the structure? Did you develop a 501c3, non-profit?

BR: Once it was formally changed from Jeske Park to Jeske Sculpture Park, that was what we needed to move forward and develop the 501c3, Friends of Jeske Sculpture Garden, which is the fundraising entity. We wanted to make sure we weren’t using any city funds for art because of the divisive political views on that. It’s a five-person board with three designated seats for professional artists, one permanent seat for a member in the neighborhood association and one permanent seat for a member of the parks board of the city of Ferguson. So we put out a call, we vet the artists and then bring them to city council for the final okay. We notify the artists, bring them in and use the funds raised by the 501c3 to provide stipends. The city provides installation assistance and poured all of the pads.

Antenna by Snail Scott

 

JW: Does the city still help with maintenance?

BR: Well that’s the great thing about developing a sculpture park in an already existing park. It was part of the discussion and what made it so easy to buy in that there was no additional maintenance. They have a little less grass to mow and have a to weed-eat around the pads. As far as the works go, if there’s a problem with one, whether its been vandalized or another issue, I’m the person that’s going to get the phone call. I think that if there’s any part of this that can be shared as a potential model, that local governments can work with even the smallest arts organizations to set up high-impact projects with really minimal investment.

JW: How did you get the funding to start this?

BR: The initial seed money came from the city paying for the pads and that was cost-effective for them. The art itself is on loan through honorariums that the artists receive. I gave a presentation to the Ferguson Lion’s Club, they were excited and wanted to contribute. So they are the angel donor for the first round. We wanted the initial exhibition to be successful to get people excited about it so that we could approach a broader base of fundraising. As everyone, we’re looking at grants, Kickstarter, and other, larger organizations and local businesses to help out.

Articulator by Andrew Light

JW: What were the examples that you were able to show in the initial meetings? What was your model based off of? Were you showing specific artists or sculpture parks?

BR: What I found to be helpful was Photoshopping images into pictures of the park. I took photos of the park showed a broad spectrum of work. There was Tony Cragg on one side of the spectrum and some undergraduate work I had seen and dropped into the image on the other side. The scale of the proposal was more ambitious than what is represented in the first round but establishing from the beginning that you have the vision to go there is how you get support for it. I plan to deliver but it’s going to take years.

JW: What was the first year that this happened and who are some of the artists?

BR: We cut the ribbon in 2014 and had the opening a few months before Michael Brown was shot. Since then the context really changed in the city. For the first round I worked with artists that I knew personally and trust very much. Many donated there time and would forego the honorarium to contribute, which was great since we were able to bank our money for future exhibitions.

JW: So a lot of local artists?

BR: So we have 10 pieces by eight artists representing seven states. We were able to work with people from as far as New York with Matt Wicker and Elizabeth Kronfeld each with one piece. Austin Collins is a professor at the University of Notre Dame and another colleague Bill Kramer both have work in. I have a couple pieces and part of that I was conservative with the budget in order to fill a few spaces with my work and get those spots secured and I know I can move my work out at any time.

JW: What are future funding plans for 2016?

BR: Since the context has changed with all that’s happened in Ferguson, I’m cautious. I would like to use Kickstarter while we have the nation’s eye. I don’t see it as a long-term sustainable funding mechanism but as a way to boost us forward. I would like to do an ambitious show in 2016. I worked with a lot of artists that ended up being white and male. I have two female artists as well but am working on connections with a number of African-American sculptors. I want to do an exhibition that’s more open as far as racial demographics and as far as perspective. I would love to see work that is relevant or maybe reactionary to what’s happened in Ferguson. I think that’s really important and we would be offering a space to comment on what has happened from an outsider or an insider perspective. However I also think it’s important that’s not the entirety of the show. So that the viewers, who are primarily local residents have a variety of viewpoints expressed so that they have the opportunity to find something in the park that they identify with and are interested in.

By Jake Weigel

For more information visit http://www.fergusoncity.com/525/Jeske-Park-Sculpture-Garden, http://www.bryceolenrobinson.com/#/highlands/

Robert Bruno’s Steel House. Photo by author.

Texas Tech University began its current Public Art Program in 1998 by setting aside one percent of the estimated total cost of each new major capital project on campus. To this point, the total investment has increased to over $9 million. Currently, the university has six projects that are pending which would increase that total amount to over $11 million. Projects include architectural enhancements such as murals or mosaics as well as purchased and site-specific sculpture. The collection of art includes many regional and nationally recognized artists including James Watkins, Steve Teeters, Terry Allen, Jesus Morales, Deborah Butterfield, Barbara Grygutis, Joe O’ Connell and Blessing Hancock.

The most recent addition was a sculpture by the late Robert Bruno installed in late January outside of the architecture building. Born in Los Angeles in 1945, he lived in Mexico before moving to Lubbock as an architecture professor at Texas Tech. His famous design, the “Steel House” or “Metal Mansion” was created in Ransom Canyon, just 15 minutes east of Lubbock. The steel sculpture recently installed was the inspiration for the house and was built in 1974. Bruno was known as a bold innovator. In addition to the sculpture and house, he also started a company, P & R Surge Systems, to sell his solar-powered “fertigation” system for crops in the sparse fields of West Texas, enabling him to work on the house and other ideas.

Robert Bruno, Untitled. Photo by author

 

The house took over 35 years to construct. Bruno was able to live in the personalized space before he passed away in 2008. It remains a private residence today. In a land that is extremely flat and austere, he was able to create the 110-ton steel anomaly with sweeping curves that seem to defy gravity as floor, ceiling and walls begin to merge. The addition of stained-glass windows created by the artist magnifies the West Texas sunlight in the distended space for a truly unique experience. Such an organic form could only conceived of by a visionary through the passing of time, honest labor and an intelligence of the hand. Bruno was known to tear down and replace sections of the house as he felt fit over the years it took to finish.

Robert Bruno’s Steel House. Photo by author.

 

Considering the local significance and history of the “Steel House” and the preceding sculptural form is a great addition to the University and Lubbock. The steel sculpture had sat on a trailer in a cotton field for over 35 years south of Lubbock before being purchased by Texas Tech. In an age of R. Buckminster Fuller and region with Paolo Soleri, Bruno’s ambitions were great, though it seemed to be the actual work that pleased him. The addition of the sculpture will no doubt increase the innovative side of the region and University while honoring Bruno’s legacy.

The steel sculpture’s official dedication will be on April 20th, 2015 and open to the public. It is located on the corner of 18th Street and Flint Avenue in Lubbock, Texas.

By Jake Weigel

Tanya Ragir. American, b. 1955. Sandscape, 2001. Painted cast resin. Collection of the artist. Image courtesy of Grand Rapids Art Museum

Still in its infancy, ArtPrize, Michigan’s international public art festival, draws hundreds of thousands of tourists into Grand Rapids for two carnivalesque weeks each year, pumping $22 million into the city’s economy.  It makes one wonder why more cities don’t explore the economic and cultural potential of public art.  Fortunately, those not among the nearly half-million attendees that came this fall can experience the show’s highlights at the Grand Rapids Art Museum’s ArtPrize Encore, slated to run until the end of ArtPrize 2015.

ArtPrize began in 2009, drawing about 200,000 visitors, and has been increasingly popular ever since.  Anyone can submit work; this year featured over 1,500 entries.  The public gets to vote for the best works, though a separate panel of experts chooses winners of their own, conscientiously initiating a conversation about the conflict between public and expert taste.

Anila Quayyum Agha. American, b. Pakistan 1965. Intersections, 2013. Installation with laser-cut wood, light and shadows. Collection of the artist Image courtesy of Grand Rapids Art Museum

 

Unprecedentedly, this year both juries awarded the crowning laurel to Pakistani-born artist Anila Quayyum Agha, whose sculpture comprises the unmistakable centerpiece of ArtPrize Encore.  Agha’s Intersections, a site-specific installation at the GRAM, is a suspended cube of elaborate laser-cut wooden tracery, its patterns derived from Spain’s Alhambra.  A solitary light in its center projects kaleidoscopic light and shadows on the gallery’s walls, floors, and ceiling; viewers who step into the space, their own shadows cast onto the gallery walls, inevitably become part of the pattern.  It’s an immersive baptism by light that can only be experienced in person (though prospective viewers should be aware that Intersections will be pulled from ArtPrize Encore before the rest of the show).

Intersections from Grand Rapids Art Museum on Vimeo.

Ten other works comprise the rest of ArtPrize Encore, each selected by the museum’s curators who scouted the festival for highlights which respond well to the GRAM’s permanent collection.  For example, Tanya Ragir’s Sandscapes, presenting three disorientingly fragmented close-ups of the female body, now hangs alongside the GRAM’s modest collection of cubist-inspired sculpture and painting.

The ambitious I am Not Who You Think I Am/ No soy quien crees que soy fills an entire gallery and then some.  Here, activist artist Salvador Jiménez offers a multimedia installation presenting viewers with many inventive and varied ceramic self-portraits exposing persistent, ethnic stereotypes and addressing the conflict Jiménez feels between his identities as a bi-lingual, bi-cultural Mexican-born artist working in America.

Salvador Jiménez-Flores from Grand Rapids Art Museum on Vimeo.

Since the works of ArtPrize Encore were created independently and originally exhibited at different venues throughout the city, there is admittedly a certain lack of cohesion.  But ArtPrize itself doesn’t have a theme, after all, other than to serve as a visible platform for public art.  So for the duration of the year, viewers to the GRAM can get their public art fix until ArtPrize 2015 which, if previous years are any indication of what is to come, promises to be the biggest one yet.

The ArtPrize website is a wonderful repository of images and information, including news about the forthcoming ArtPrize Dallas, set to launch in 2016: http://www.artprize.org/

By Jonathan Rinck

Sydney Buddha, 2014. Zhang Huan. Carriageworks. Photo: Paula Llull

One of my favorite art spaces in Sydney is Carriageworks. It is situated in the old railway workshop complex in Eveleigh, not too far from Redfern station. This imposing example of industrial architecture from the late 1800s, with its immense rooms, chipped off walls and impressive iron pillars, is a very appropriate setting for big art installations, the same as Cockatoo Island in Sydney’s harbor. Carriageworks is a good example of how the reuse of old industrial premises for artistic and cultural activities implies the regeneration of the public space and improves its accessibility. The collaboration with the main cultural events that take place in Sydney achieves the integrative goal, engaging audiences to this part of the city. Its program is mainly focused in performing arts, contemporary dance and independent theatre and puts up several resident companies. Nevertheless, the versatility of its spaces makes possible the display of large-scale art installations as we could see in the last Biennale of Sydney when, for the first time, it was one of the official venues for a few sculpture and video installations. The darkness required for the projections created a somehow phantasmagorical and, at the same time, appealing atmosphere that allowed you to enjoy every one of the videos without any interferences. No doubt it was a great setting and we hope it will keep on being one of the Biennale’s venues in the future.

Sydney Buddha, 2014. Zhang Huan, Carriageworks. Photo: Paula Llull

 

In recent years, every summer Carriageworks showcases a major art installation in collaboration with the Sydney Festival. In 2013 we could see the emotional Waste Not by Chinese artist Song Dong, about her mother’s process of mourning after his father’s death through the collection of every single object in her house. In 2014, Christian Boltanski’s Chance made a big impression because of its magnitude and complexity. This year, Zhang Huan occupies the old industrial unit with Sydney Buddha two large-scale buddhas (over 5 meters tall). One of them is made of aluminum and is actually the cast of the other one, made of 20 tons of compressed ash from burnt incense sticks that the artist has collected from Buddhist temples in Shanghai’s region. This ash, also present in his paintings, represents the history, the memory and the desires of the Chinese people. It is the soul of every person, the artists says, who has trusted his or her desires and prayers in these incense sticks.

Sydney Buddha, 2014. Zhang Huan, Carriageworks. Photo: Paula Llull

 

The symbolic potential and the creative possibilities of this material which is in China’s daily life and for this very reason it passes unnoticed arrived to Zhang Huan in a crucial moment of his career. After living 8 years in New York he decided to return to China with a renewed view thanks to his vital experience in the Western culture. If in the first part of his career he was mainly focused on a type of performance with an autobiographical and social nature, after his move to Shanghai he got into a more spiritual perspective, where Buddhism and local traditions are pre-eminent. As that proverb that says that traveling makes you wiser, Zhang Huan values the learning of his American stay, which has resulted in a deeper knowledge of his own culture and history.

Pacific Flotsam, 2007 (detail). Bill Culbert, National Art School. Photo: Paula Llull

 

There is another exhibition within the Sydney Festival visual arts program not to miss these days. The National Art School in Darlinghurst – another great example of reclaimed space – showcases a retrospective of the emblematic New Zealander sculptor and photographer Bill Culbert. His striking intervention at Santa Maria della Pietà, the New Zealand pavilion at the last Venice Biennale, has granted the reaffirmation of the well-deserved international recognition. Culbert is contemporary to the Minimalist generation and shares important similarities with Dan Flavin’s work. Nonetheless he breaks the distinctive calculated distancing of the Minimalist sculpture incorporating simple domestic objects such as furniture, plastic containers and jars that interact with the light. This exhibition, the largest in Australia up to date gathers his most impressive sculptural and photographic works in the last 35 years.

By Paula Llull

More info: Carriageworks, Zhang Huan, Bill Culbert

Reclining Figure No. 2, Henry Moore, Gift, 1963, photo credit Jo-Ann Conklin

The state of Rhode Island is lucky to have two great schools in Providence, Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Of the two, RISD probably gets more credit for Providence’s reputation as the ‘Creative Capital’, but Brown is quite active in the arts and has an excellent campus public art program. 

According to the Brown website, “The “sculpture committee” of Brown University was formed in the mid-1980s by Artemis Joukowsky in close collaboration with Visual Art Professor Richard Fishman and other members of the administration and faculty…With the establishment of Brown’s percent-for-art program by President Gordon Gee in 1999, the committee was renamed the Public Art Committee and its mission was expanded.”

Brown divides its collection into 4 categories: Percent For Art commissions, gifts, commissioned memorials and loans.

YOU, Orly Genger, temporary loan, 2014

 

What Makes This Program Successful?

• They have a good mix of temporary and permanent work. Their temporary program has sometimes served as a way to feature works by talented alumni including Arthur Carter, Orly Genger, Sarah Oppenheimer and Nina Katchadourian.
• Works are selected by committee, but they are also tightly curated. Brown curator Jo-Ann Conklin connects artists to her community with skill and dedication.
• The siting of works is sensitively done. Brown’s campus planning and design department has made a commitment to creating beautiful spaces. The campus architecture, a mix of old and new buildings, for the most part maintains a certain human-scaled height and as a consequence, many of the spaces are intimate. Like the Highline in New York, the scale fits the human body, creating an appealing outdoor museum.
• They own an interesting collection of permanent works by important contemporary artists including Henry Moore, Ann Hamilton, Martin Puryear and soon, Maya Lin.
• They have some good classic sculptures that were installed long before the Public Art Committee began its efforts, including the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius that stands at the rear of Sayles Hall and Paolo Abate’s bust of Dante, which stands in front of the John Hay Library.

Lines Of Sight, Diane Samuels, Percent For Art Commission, 2006

 

According to Vicki Veh, producer of ArtRI, “though Brown features many public artworks on campus, many people unaffiliated with their local university community believe it is necessary to have official business on a college campus in order to visit its grounds. This belief has prevented some from seeing university art collections.” Brown’s collection is free and available to all. If you travel through Rhode Island and are interested in public art, be sure to stop and see.

Check out the Brown public art map: http://www.brown.edu/about/public-art/maps

By Elizabeth Keithline

The Kiss, Bronze, 1970. Photo by author.

The Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum holds a unique place in Austin: a lush outdoor oasis only blocks from the heart of the city focusing on both midcentury and contemporary sculpture. Founded in 1989 when Charles Umlauf, professor of sculpture at the University of Texas at Austin from 1941-1981, donated 168 works and deeded nearly 2 acres to the city of Austin as a place to show his bronzes. From 1989 to 1991, adjacent land was secured and in 1991 the sculpture garden moved permanently to their current space just across the river from downtown.

In 2013, when it became time to find a full-time curator separate from the executive director, the Umlauf was incredibly fortunate to bring in Katie Robinson Edwards. Previously a professor of Art History at Baylor University for eight years, she got the news that Umlauf was searching for a curator and spread the word to her graduate students. After thinking further about the job compared to her research and interests, she realized that it would suit her perfectly. Edwards got the news that she would be the new curator directly before the semester began, secured a replacement to teach her classes, and began at Umlauf in August of 2013.

Reclining Nude, Bronze, 1958. Photo by author.

 

In keeping with the spirit of the Umlauf, Edwards began as a volunteer. She spent time working with the outgoing executive director/curator before beginning as the full time curator directly after Labor Day 2013. Edwards’ curatorial vision, a wonderful synthesis of old and new, is what makes her work at the Umlauf truly stand out. She plans on continuing to showcase Umlauf’s work, but also works to put him in context with his contemporaries and show the trajectory of contemporary sculpture from the 1980s until today. Focusing on seasonal exhibitions, at least four a year, two are Umlauf cornerstones and two concentrate on contemporary sculpture. The Umlauf Prize, a juried exhibition and cash prize awarded to a University of Texas at Austin MFA student, is also included on top of these four exhibitions.

On view until early 2015 is Umlauf: Process, an exhibition of the fiberglass sculpture molds used to cast Charles Umlauf’s bronze sculptures. Never before seen by the public, this exhibition is an intriguing look into the process and materials behind the masterful finished bronzes. In January an exhibition of the sculpture of Luis Jiménez opens, celebrating a great Texas artist and bridging the gap between Umlauf and contemporary sculptors working figuratively.

Rhino, Bronze, 1976. Photo by author.

 

2016 is the 25th anniversary of the Umlauf, and it is sure to be an exciting year. With an anniversary exhibition showing Umlauf’s influences and degrees of separation as well as an Umlauf Prize retrospective group show, stay on the lookout for their upcoming programming! While planning your visit, don’t forget that the grounds are absolutely stunning in the spring.

For more information, please visit umlaufsculpture.org

By Gracelee Lawrence

The Music Box, New Orleans, LA, 2012

New Orleans Airlift is an artist-driven initiative whose mission is to collaborate to inspire wonder, connect communities and foster opportunities through the creation of experimental public art.

From the New Orleans Airlift Website

“I knew it was gonna be nice because they’re puttin’ their heart and soul into it.” —Anthony D.J. Paul, Neighbor Of Airlift’s Music Box

Here’s what New Orleans Airlift is not:

They’re not sculptors.

They’re not visual artists.

They’re not public artists.

They’re not musicians.

They’re not recording artists.

They’re not performers.

They’re not composers.

They’re not architects.

They’re not puppeteers.

They’re not cultural ambassadors.

They’re not community activists.

They’re not playground designers.

They’re not arts educators.

They’re not project managers.

They’re not impresarios.

They’re not entertainers.

They’re not party hosts.

Okay, scratch all that. They’re all of those things.

New Orleans Airlift is a hybrid collective making socially engaged work. Rather than art making per se, they informally gather community members together to experience participatory music and sound production, visual art and guerilla architecture. Airlift doesn’t seem to be limited to any particular media, but there is an overall DIY aesthetic that’s much more steampunk grit than techno-pop light show.

Theris Valvery, a Flag Boy with the Black Feathers Mardi Gras Indian Tribe during a Music Box performance.

 

INCEPTION

After Hurricane Katrina, musician Jay Pennington, (aka DJ Rusty Lazer), and installation artist Delaney Martin sensed that if New Orleans artists were to survive, they needed new audiences. Calling themselves New Orleans Airlift (after the WW II Berlin Airlift), they took 32 artists to Germany to perform. Since that time, they’ve traveled to Kiev, Ukraine, Atlanta and Shreveport.

Using what they learned from their early Berlin adventure, they’ve launched many subsequent projects. One of the most well known is The Music Box: A Shantytown Sound Library, which is best described as a set of nine shacks that were embedded with invented instruments to be played collaboratively by the community at large and invited guests.

According to the Airlift website, when Pennington was looking for something to do with a building that had collapsed in his yard, Martin, sound artist Taylor Lee Shepherd and Brooklyn street artist Swoon, (aka Caledonia Dance Curry), came up with the idea of musical architecture.

Sources of inspiration for the houses include labyrinthine Italian archways, the Luoyang Bridge in Japan, the Ice Village in Harbin, China and architecture in Warri, Nigeria. One of the shacks was designed by Eliza Zeitlin, director of the movie Beasts Of The Southern Wild, which gives some idea of the kitchen-sink aesthetic.

The wildly popular Music Box existed in New Orleans for eight months in 2011-2012. Thousands of people participated. The house existed as a template for the creative work of others, as guest conductors would be invited to lead a revolving cast of musicians. Among their many collaborators were Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Bounce artist Nicky Da B and Cash Money producer Manny Fresh.

The 504 Boyz With Their Horses, from Airlift’s Rally Under The Bridge, New Orleans, LA, 2014

 

NEXT ITERATIONS

When the Music Box ended, Airlift declared it a test for a much larger version, which now seems to have splintered off in two different, yet related, directions. The first is the Music Box Village Project, modular music houses that are built to move around New Orleans in 2015.

The second is Dithyrambalina, a ‘permanent sonic playground’ that Airlift hopes to construct for the city. The root of the word Dithyrambalina is dithyramb, an ancient Greek choral hymn sung and danced in honor of the wine god, Dionysius. Money is being raised to bring the project to fruition.

 
Poster for Rally Under The Bridge, New Orleans, LA, 2014

In the meantime, all of the artists in Airlift are also busy with their own careers. Taylor Lee Shepherd’s Space Rites, a visual and sound installation at St. Maurice Church in New Orleans is up through January 2015. In May 2014, Delaney Martin was the lead artist on Rally Under The Bridge and Airlift produced Public Practice, an anti-violence performance piece in October.

A recent iteration of the group’s ongoing explorations took place during the International Sculpture Conference in the 9th Ward on October 2, 2014. Visual artist Andrew Schrock and sound artist Klaas Huebner created a “musical fan tower” that generated sound through moving air. Musicians who played along with the rotating fan blades of the house included Aurora Nealand, (accordion), Brad Walker, (saxophone), and Paul Thibodeaux, (drums).

Maybe it was the night, maybe it was the mood, maybe it was being seated in a dark hot warehouse underneath a highway overpass, but the performance was echo-y, ethereal, magical.

Could this project exist in a place that wasn’t so steeped in a rich musical history? I think we would all love to find out. As Delaney Martin said, “One thing I really like about Music Box is that it doesn’t end. It’s a renewable source of creativity”. Let’s hope to see their work around the world for many years to come.

By Elizabeth Keithline

Embrace by Pier Group at Burning Man 2014. Photo by Author.

The sort of art that one makes at Burning Man is not like the sort of art that one makes elsewhere. The gallery space is a desert. The viewers of the art are crowds of brightly colored denizens of a temporary city. And the temporary city is in a desert, because it is one of the few places in the world that such a massive, temporary project of infrastructure, ingenuity, and imagination could be easily built and disassembled.

Temporary is the factor overshadowing every piece of art in the Black Rock Desert. Time controls the build schedule, and the construction materials. The Burning Man festival is only one week long, so the art must appear and disappear again on that time frame. And it must disappear very literally, as the land is public land, conserved environmentally as well as architecturally. Nothing permanent can be built, and no trace of what occurs there can remain. This is one of the reasons that burning the art has become so popular, in mimicry of the climactic burn of the gigantic wooden man that gives the festival its name.

 
Embrace by Pier Group at Burning Man 2014. Photo by Author.

Time was the reason that Embrace, built by the Pier Group, burned on Friday morning of Burning Man 2014. A collective of artists, engineers, and builders who had collaborated on previous Burning Man art projects came together to build a 72-foot sculpture of two figures embracing. But by the time the work was completed, they realized that they could never disassemble it and clean up the area on schedule. So they decided to let fire do their work for them. A dense cloud of smoke went up into the blue desert sky of the morning as flames ate away the delaminated plywood making the skin of the structure. A crowd of onlookers danced and cheered as the core structure burned. The structure had previously supported internal staircases allowing visitors to climb inside the sculpture and up to the heads. Each figure held massive chandeliers in their chests, in the shape of human hearts. As the last vestiges of the structure collapsed into charcoal and ash, a dust storm swept over the desert, leaving the revelers blind in a white cloud, with nothing but the beat of music to guide them.

It might seem wasteful to spend all that money, effort, and material on a piece of art that will last for less than a week. But any construction, whether made of wood, steel, or stone is transitory, and requires upkeep to maintain. Burning Man is a festival of repetition and cycles. Every annual festival is not just a week, but the culmination of an entire year of fund raising, planning, and work behind the scenes. Like an annual flower which blooms once and then whithers away until next year, the plant is not dead beneath the ground during the winter, but simply in the less abundant stage of its life cycle. Some art strives for permanence, attempting to make a mark that will last through the accelerating years. But every work of art is more than what is seen at its point of completion. From sketches, to models, to failed experiments, to lessons learned, to grant applications, to sales—all of these non-art elements come together to make the art what it is.

 
Inside Embrace by Pier Group at Burning Man 2014. Photo by Author.

The process of art is what Burning Man celebrates, in addition to the monumental size of some of the works. The community is a huge factor. Crowd-developed, crowd-built, and crowd-funded projects like Embrace are the only reason that such scale is possible. The crowd is every bit as important as any individual artist, and while certain names may take the spotlight, everyone knows the assistants as well. The artwork expands outward, not constrained to any particular creativity or site, but spread throughout all who come in contact with it. Those who interact with the work, climbing its staircases, hiding in its shade from the heat of the sun, and who gather to watch and cheer its burning are part of the process, and part of the art. From initial spark, to the final pile of embers, this is what is considered when attendees refer to “The Burn”. From the most engineered plans, to the random synchronicity of a fire in a dust storm, the elements of the creative process embrace each other, holding tightly, until they suddenly let go.

By Adam Rothstein

Willi Dorner, “Bodies in Urban Spaces”, associated event/project – Art & About Sydney

I came to live in Sydney in September, a few days after my arrival the popular arts festival Art & About started. Held every year with the arrival of spring, it consists on a series of artistic events in various public spaces that invite us to be around town. I remember being impressed by the quality of interventions and awareness of its the City of Sydney, to offer a series of actions whose prerequisite is their close connection to the city and its people, who day after day take part actively in the various activities that build up in the CBD and neighbouring districts. Art & About, now in its 13th edition (September 19 to October 12), is a traditional invitation to playfully experience the city, not only from the point of view of artists but also inviting Sydneysiders to reveal their passion for this city. This year the everyday and the citizens themselves are, more than ever, the main protagonists of a set of activities ranging from the traditional photographic competitions Little Sydney Lives and Australian Life (this year, for the first time, participation has expanded to the whole country) to a series of unusual neighbourhood tours guided by children in Kings Cross and Redfern. Not forgetting Armchair Apocalypse, a series of “pocket size” theatre shows by young local writers in Sydney’s private lounge rooms. The full program and parallel activities in the surrounding neighbourhoods is available here: http://www.artandabout.co

 
Lee Bethel, “Imago”

This year, instead of the sculptures or installations that usually occupy Hyde Park there will be a stunning exhibition design in which 10 tepees welcome the work of the most prominent graphic artists of the international scene with a witty and sometimes critical view of the nomad and urban lifestyles. Sculpture, that usually was exhibited in this park, on this occasion finds different nooks of the CBD with Bodies in Urban Spaces by Austrian artist Willi Dorner. 20 people dressed in bright colours will crowd by surprise momentarily in the gaps and crannies created by the architecture and street furniture, prompting the passer-by to observe these empty spaces of the city from a fun point of view.

Around the same dates (September 19-October 12) and not far from the City in Western Sydney, we can continue our artistic walk in a most unusual setting. HIDDEN is a group exhibition of outdoor sculpture by local artists among the tombs and gardens of the oldest part of the Rookwood Cemetery in Lidcombe.

 
Ian Watt, “Janus Gateway”

I must confess that I love old cemeteries. Wandering among the graves brings me pleasant childhood memories. Surely this is because I frequently accompanied my grandmother when I was very little to our town’s cemetery. She loved to keep the family grave well cleaned and with beautiful flowers, so our visits to that place were like an extension of the domestic activities. While she was busy arranging the grave and filling the pots with fresh water I ventured to walk the surroundings, carefully watching the sculptures of weeping women and practicing my newfound reading activity with the names carved on the tombstones. This is the reason why, last year, when I read about HIDDEN, I was enthusiastic by how interested were the organisers to “re-mould the negative public perception of cemeteries and in turn ‘re-enliven’ our burial grounds”[i]. In spite of the ups and downs in the selection of works -at least in last year’s exhibition- HIDDEN achieves its goal. The sculptures subjects, quite rightly, are not necessarily related to the death or the afterlife but respond to the idea of highlighting the history and richness of Australian multicultural nation which is reflected in the country’s largest cemetery.

Parallel to the exhibition, during the school holidays, are scheduled workshops for children between 8 and 16 years.

By Paula Llull

[i] http://hidden.rookwoodcemetery.com.au

Sidewalk Psychiatry, detail, Candy Chang, 2004

“Under the seeming disorder of the old city, wherever the old city is working successfully, is a marvelous order for maintaining the safety of the streets and the freedom of the city. It is a complex order. Its essence is intricacy of sidewalk use, bringing with it a constant succession of eyes. This order is all composed of movement and change, and although it is life, not art, we may fancifully call it the art form of the city and liken it to the dance — not to a simple-minded precision dance with everyone kicking up at the same time, twirling in unison and bowing off en masse, but to an intricate ballet in which the individual dancers and ensembles all have distinctive parts which miraculously reinforce each other and compose an orderly whole. The ballet of the good city sidewalk never repeats itself from place to place, and in any one place is always replete with new improvisations.”

― Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

The Jane Jacobs quote above links life on the world’s sidewalks to a mass performance piece that unfolds everyday, everywhere.

Yes Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, a professor of urban planning at UCLA and author of Sidewalks: Conflict and Negotiation Over Public Space says, “As public space, sidewalks are everywhere and link everything, and no one seems to notice them”. 

 
Jo Hanson, Art That’s Sweeping The City, San Franciso, 1980
Sidewalks As Participatory Art Installation 

When we install sidewalks, we confirm the importance of walking and of interaction within our communities. Though this is by no means a complete list, here are some artists who have paused to appreciate the lowly sidewalk and to use sidewalks as a method of engaging the public in their unique social practices:

In the 1970’s, artist Jo Hanson acquired a house on Buchanan Street in San Francisco. After restoring it, she began a daily campaign of sweeping the 180’ sidewalk out front.

According to the Women Environmental Artists Directory, Hanson said, “ Soon my cleaning extended to the whole block – one to three times daily. City trucks

came one to three times daily to haul (what I was sweeping) away. City workers and I became buddies and collaborators, which led into unanticipated collaborations down the line”. This public art happening later became a citywide anti-litter campaign, with Mayor Dianne Feinstein participating in “the sweeping of sidewalks as Art”.

In 2006, (well before her famed installation Before I Die), artist Candy Chang created Sidewalk Psychiatry to “encourage self-evaluation in transit”. Chang uses this Soren Kierkegaard quote describe the project:

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts.”

The project consisted of temporary questions on the sidewalk, such as ‘Do you think that went well?’ ‘Does she know how you feel?’ and ‘Does it have to do with your childhood?’ Chang called it “Public therapy, free of charge.”

Admittedly, Brazilian artist Nele Azevedo tends to install her work on steps, but her audience views it from the sidewalk and her work is too good not to include here.

Melting Men by Nele Azevedo, photo credit: chelleliddlekiddle.blogspot

 

Azevedo installs small human forms made of ice on the steps of public squares. The work becomes a performance piece as the public stops to watch the forms quickly melt away, evoking a kind of poignancy through its impermanence.

According to Azevedo’s website: “The Minimum Monument project is a critical reading of the monument in the contemporary cities. In a few-minutes action, the official canons of the monument are inverted: in the place of the hero, the anonym; in the place of the solidity of the stone, the ephemeral ice; in the place of the monumental scale, the minimum scale of the perishable bodies”.

By Elizabeth Keithline

Other artists who have worked with sidewalks include:

Anne Peabody: http://annepeabody.com/sculpture-installation/my-sidewalk-2004

Alexander Calder: http://www.placematters.net/node/986

Francoise Schein: http://art-nerd.com/newyork/subway-map-floating-on-a-ny-sidewalk/

Ken Hiratsuka: http://art-nerd.com/newyork/ken-hiratsukas-carved-granite-sidewalk-in-noho/

George Zisiadis:  http://www.citylab.com/design/2013/09/his-art-installation-turns-pedestrians-heartbeats-music/6926/

For Further Information:

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/10-questions-for-sidewalk-scholar-101895

Jo Hanson: http://weadartists.org/ecoart-as-performance

The Green Museum: http://greenmuseum.org/generic_content.php?ct_id=285

Candy Chang, Sidewalk Psychiatry: http://www.harrisburg.govoffice.com/index.asp?SEC=B02ACD18-D872-4562-9BE2-08120D7245A5&Type=B_BASIC

Nele Azevedo: http://neleazevedo.com.br/

“It’s all downhill from here”, start line of NEPO 5k Don’t Run 2012. Photo by Eric Becker.

In 2011 writer and curator Klara Glosova opened up her home as an ad hoc gallery known as NEPO House (“open” spelled backwards). She invited Seattle denizens into its domestic nooks and crannies to view the work of local artists, both well-known and not so well-known. Glosova, who has defined the space as “a homing device for experimental, multimedia projects,” didn’t stop there. Soon afterwards the Czech Republic transplant helped organize an annual 5k traipse through the city’s core that lasts but one day, and which has become one of the metropolis’ most anticipated annual events. Of course, “anticipated” suggests that participants know what they can expect. They can’t. The attraction of NEPO 5k Walk Don’t Run relies on expecting the utterly unexpected.

NEPO 5k participants looking at an installation in Daejeon park. NEPO 5k Don’t Run 2013. Photo by Kari Champoux.

 

Originally the organizers toyed with the idea of a marathon. When they were unable to secure the necessary permits for a running event they asked participants to take it slow. And with good reason. Each year approximately 50–60 site-specific projects guide walkers from Hing Hay Park in Seattle’s International District to Glosova’s home in the residential neighborhood of Beacon Hill. In 2013 the event included synchronized dancing, a carnivalesque peepshow, fire juggling, and objects of the wild (like trees) branded as art—call it a modern, arboristic take on Duchamp’s urinal. Why, with all this, would anyone want to sprint?

“L’apres-midi d’un Pham” a performance by Mike Pham. NEPO 5k Don’t Run 2011. Photo by Zack Bent.

 

Now in its 4th year, the walking and gawking en route is only part of the experience. The four curators enlisted for the 2014 walk (Sierra Stinson, Zack Bent, Serrah Russell and Glosova) round out the event with DJs, a Drink or Don’t Drink Garden, Food Trucks, live music and curated finish line performances. Performers along the route traditionally activate the city by taking advantage of oft-unused sections of Seattle like freeway underpasses, bike paths, and dilapidated garages. The website motto for NEPO 5k Walk Don’t Run sounds like a family friendly poolside warning: “Hop, skip and jump—just don’t run.” Glosova has just completed a series of paintings titled soccer mom.  She’s used to incorporating art into life. Now she’s making it easier for the city of Seattle to do so too.  At NEPO House pillows, closets, kitchen cabinets, and bathtubs can act as a stage (or not), making it possible for mundane, often overseen goods to take on strange sculptural and symbolic meaning. It might signal the end of the white cube as we know it, but it literally opens the door to a big beautiful world.

By Suzanne Beal

NEPO 5k Walk Don’t Run 2014
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Noon-8:00pm

http://www.nepohouse.org/

Grand Central Lights by Improv Everywhere for MTA Arts For Transit And Design, New York, NY

From the Americans For the Arts website:

Americans for the Arts Public Art Network (PAN) develops professional services for the broad array of individuals and organizations engaged in the diverse field of public art. PAN is the only professional network in the United States dedicated to advancing public art programs and projects through advocacy, policy, and information resources to further art and design in our built environment.

The Public Art Network is a great resource for artists and administrators. $50 in annual membership dues supports nationwide arts advocacy efforts, (so you are helping as you learn), and it includes a daily digest email with calls for entry and technical advice on a range of issues: insurance, contracts, durability, technology and more. Knowing what these issues are before you propose a project is helpful.

AFTA organizes an annual conference that includes a two-day public art preconference. They open the event with a presentation called Year In Review, which recognizes “outstanding public art projects that represent the most compelling work for the year…Selected jurors review hundreds of project applications and develop a “year in review” presentation of projects from across the country. Temporary and permanent projects in a range of budget sizes are eligible. Year In Review 2014 was presented at the Nashville Omni Hotel on Thursday, June 12th. This year’s selected projects ranged in size from $7,000 to $1.2 million.

Del Paso Words On Walls detail by Barbara Hennely for the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, Sacramento, CA.

 

HIVE MIND

The jurors for Year In Review are selected by the PAN Council. The 2014 jurors were Ralph Helmick, Janet Zweig and Cath Brunner. Helmick and Zweig are both working public artists whose projects have been selected for Year In Review 8 and 10 times respectively. Cath Brunner directs the highly regarded public art program for 4culture in Seattle.

Sometimes panelists decide that each will select and present based only on their own likes and dislikes, but this year, the jurors chose to work together, reportedly spending many hours on the phone reviewing each project and hearing each other’s opinions. In the end, their hard work was evident.

Cath Brunner commented, “We chose to learn from each other”. In spending all that time on the phone, they gained insight into ‘unfortunate trends’, originality and ambition. They prioritized projects that “connected to the viewer and connected to place” “without being “crushingly literal”. They asked, ultimately, “Is it interesting?”

Working together with one “hive mind” as Helmick called it, they determined that they would designate a “Love Letter” for every project that received a unanimous vote. Out of 37 awarded, there were 6 of these. When Love Letters were presented, the audience heard a lilting melody.

The team also came up with a unique way to grapple with the times when they didn’t agree at all: Each juror was allowed two wild cards for projects that they insisted must be included even though the other two didn’t choose to honor them. When Wild Cards were presented, the audience heard a Tarzan Call.

The Time And The Temperature by Jon Rubin for the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District As A Fiscal Agent For “Finding Time Columbus Public Art 2012, Columbus, OH

 

Initially, there were 342 entries to consider. The panel ultimately chose 37 projects.

THE AWARDEES

Love Letters

• Inversion +/- by Lead Pencil Studio for the Portland, OR Regional Arts & Culture Council
• Open House by Matthew Mazzotta for the Coleman Center For the Arts, York, AL
• Murmuration by Jennifer Steinkamp for the Long Beach Judicial Partners, Long Beach, CA
• The Time And The Temperature by Jon Rubin for the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District As A Fiscal Agent For “Finding Time Columbus Public Art 2012, Columbus, OH
• Grand Central Lights by Improv Everywhere for MTA Arts For Transit And Design, New York, NY
• Del Paso Words On Walls by Hans Bennewitz, Paco Marquez, Benjamin Della Rose, Susan Kelly-DeWitt, Laura Edmisten-Matranga, Danny Romero, Barbara Hennely, Catherine French, William Leung and Tim Kahl for the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, Sacramento, CA.

Wild Cards

• Desert Spring by Rosario Marquardt & Roberto Behar, R & R Studios, for the Phoenix Office Of Arts & Culture, Phoenix, AZ
• The Lexington Tattoo Project by Kurt Gohde and Kremena Todorava, self commissioned and funded by private individuals, foundations and organizations in Lexington, KY.
• Wonderland by Jaume Plensa for the EnCana Corporation, Calgary, AB, Canada
• Cacher Pur Mieux Montrer (Hide To Show Better) by Sans Facon for the City of Saskatoon, Placemaker Program, Saskatoon, SK, Canada
• Funnel Tunnel by Patrick Renner for the Art League Houston,
• Houston, TX
• Heard _NY by Nick Cave for MTA Arts For Transit & Urban Design,
• New York, NY

Click here for a complete list of awarded projects.

By Elizabeth Keithline

For more information
Americans For the Arts: http://www.americansforthearts.org/
Public Art Network: http://www.americansforthearts.org/by-program/networks-and-councils/public-art-network
Janet Zweig: http://www.janetzweig.com/
Ralph Helmick: http://www.helmicksculpture.com/
4culture: http://www.4culture.org/
Cath Brunner: http://convention.artsusa.org/presenters/profile/cath-brunner

The 19 Biennale of Sydney that finished last month has left, for the first time, a permanent artwork to the city. Thanks to The Biennale Legacy, the City of Sydney is committed to commission a piece during every Biennale (2014, 2016 and 2018) that will become part of its collection of public art.

The first of these three acquisitions is an impressive work by Canadian artists Janet Cardiff & George Bures-Miller. In the same way as their characteristic walks, The City of Forking Paths goes further and introduces video through a mobile device for a long duration (66 min) dusk tour. The historic precinct of The Rocks beside the iconic harbour is the scene where Janet Cardiff invites us to walk with her following her indications through the headphones. Leaving the Customs House, we start the walk through the busy Circular Quay until we reach the oldest alleys of the city, home of the first British settlers in the late 1700s, mainly convicts and sailors. The narrative used by Cardiff and Bures-Miller puts together elements of performance, poetry and cinema, alternating old stories with the actual facts of the precinct. They also introduce characters that interact with the artist and incite her own thoughts. The artist defines this artwork as “physical cinema” as the spectator is prompted to get around, guided by her voice and following the pace of the movements of the screen. The video on the device shows the same place where we are but with different actors.

“The City of Forking Paths”, by Janet Cardiff & George Bures-Miller. Photograph by Jordi Fernandez

 

The factor that definitely helps to transport the spectator to a parallel reality is the audio 3D achieved through a binaural recording, which gathers the ambient sound in the same way as the human ear. The outcome is a kind of dream dreamt with open eyes where reality and fiction get mixed up in real-time. In the words of the artists herself “three-dimensional sound creates a visual picture to me. I think on synesthesia, I really see the way audio comes together and I want to create this kind of sculptural environment[1]”

I had some false impressions myself during the walk. Because of the uncanny sound I turned a few times thinking that someone was following my steps and startled when I heard a sudden conversation very close to me. Also, when I passed by Garrison Church, I thought it was natural to hear the sound of the organ… until I realized that the church was closed. All these impressions where cooked up in my mind prompted by the sounds of the piece.

“The City of Forking Paths”, by Janet Cardiff & George Bures-Miller. Photograph by Jordi Fernandez

 

The City of Forking Paths accomplish one of the main principles I think all public artworks should have, that is offering a renewed view of the place. In this case, the place is the area of The Rocks and Dawes Point. Considered the birthplace of the Australian nation, nowadays it is an eminently touristic area where its limited number of neighbours is threatened by the real state speculation.

With The City of Forking Paths the city of Sydney joins the list of cities that have a walk by Cardiff & Bures-Miller (New York, Kassel, Sao Paulo, Munster and Washington, among other)

Note:

This video walk is configured so that you can only experiment it at dusk, starting at the Customs House opposite Circular Quay. You can download the app in your own device (it can take up to an hour) or borrow one iPod and headphones right there. The narrative of the piece aims at individual spectators so that if you are in a group you’d rather start the itinerary staggered in order to make the best of your experience.

By Paula Llull

More info:

How to experience the video walk and download the app:
http://www.sydneycustomshouse.com.au/news/index.html
http://www.cityartsydney.com.au/cityart/projects/CityofForkingPaths.asp

About Janet Cardiff & Georges Bures-Miller’s walks:
http://www.cardiffmiller.com/artworks/walks/index.html

 
[1]http://www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/arts-desk/Video-walk-forms-time-capsule-for-Sydneys-The-Rocks-140506/default.htm

This past March, in the city of Laguna Beach, California, a tribute to the past was wryly transformed into a work of art by Michael Graham. As in years past, he decided to respond to the city’s call for a new temporary artwork that will remain in situ for roughly two years. For its site, the artist proposed to create a sculptural ode to the telephone era, which has predominantly been replaced by digital technologies

 
I want to make a phone call, laminated aluminum, 5’6″ x 3′ x 2’5″.

 Indeed, through the late 90’s perhaps, a telephone booth had been languishing on the city’s predominantly toney street of Forest Avenue, in the downtown area. Indeed, the original booth had become downright grubby. And, to judge from the smell, it was probably used as a shelter from the cool ocean breezes at night by an indigent or two, even though the city offers shelter accommodations for the homeless.

The new telephone booth, as recreated by Graham, and positioned on Forest Avenue, is hermetically sealed and addresses multiple issues at the same time. The new booth functions as a trope of the past, accentuating personal communication before the era of cell phones.

 
I want to make a phone call, two layers of 1/8th aluminum, in process.

Conceptually, it thus underscores the passage of time and the changes in technology that have made phone booths obsolete as a means of communication. Simultaneously, the artwork also “resolves,” for some, the plight of the poor who had become an eyesore in relation to the city’s reputation as a toney resort by the sea. Thus, in a knowing way, Graham’s work addresses both a city’s social problem and the incarnation of new means of personal communication, which has jumped into the digital age.

Of course, it is the obsolescence of the phone booth that is meant to be the subject of this work. But, the subject is more complex than that, because the  terrain is not as simple as it appears at first glance.

By Collette Chattopadhyay

The Meeting Room, Maya Lin, Newport, RI, 2013, detail of the stone carving for the water table.

To call Nick Benson a stone carver is a little like calling Louis Comfort Tiffany a glazier. Technically, you’d be correct, but there’s a lot more to it. 

Benson hails from a family of stone carvers who have worked out of the John Stevens Shop in Newport, Rhode Island since the 1920’s. Nick’s grandfather and father designed and/or carved inscriptions for Yale, Harvard and Brown Universities, the Iwo Jima Memorial, the John F. Kennedy Memorial at the Arlington National Cemetery, the Boston Public Library, the Prudential Center, the University of Rhode Island’s Carothers Library, the Dallas Museum of Art and many others.

When John Benson retired in 1993, Nick took over the business and since that time has designed and carved for the National Gallery of Art, the World War II Memorial, the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial and the FDR Four Freedoms Park in New York. In 2007, he was awarded the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship and in 2010 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

The Benson family worked with artist Maya Lin on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama and on the Women’s Table at Yale. In 2013, Benson carved the inscriptions for Lin’s Meeting Room, an installation in Queen Anne Square in Newport. 

The Meeting Room, Maya Lin, Newport, RI, 2013, stone carver Paul Russo with work in progress.

The Meeting Room was privately commissioned as a gift to the city to honor heiress Doris Duke, a lifelong preservationist who devoted part of her fortune to restoring colonial buildings in the city that was her summer home. Ms. Duke founded the Newport Restoration Foundation in 1968 and was active in preserving and restoring Queen Anne Square.

According to the Doris Duke Monument website, “the park design centers on three stone foundations, which represent actual locations and footprints of buildings that existed on the site during three different centuries: 1777, 1876, and 1907”. Inscriptions that are period-relevant are embedded in the thresholds of each foundation.

Benson provided a list of approximately six quotes from the John Stevens Shop account books, from which Lin then selected two. They read:

To turning the arch, to the overplush of ye plastering, to laying five harthes, and

To the hard bargain that is to stoning one seller & building one stak of chimnyes & plastering the howse.

The Monument Foundation’s Executive Director Pieter Roos and Lin selected the other four quotes from historic ship logs and diaries:

Light airs at 5 am, hove short & made all sail awaiting for the breeze.

From the log of the ship Atlas, Henry A. Brightman, Master

Rained all day. Made jelly & did various other Housekeeping matters which consumed the Morning

Fanny R. Clarke’s diary from 1867

To Trinity. After church Loulie and I read up in studio and later took a walk & got wildflowers. Talked in evening.

From the diary of Anna F. Hunter

I went to several places to invite my nabours to help me husk in the evening & 25 coum to husk & the great part supt here.

Nailer Tom’s Diary, 1809

The Meeting Room includes a solid granite water table, carved with a quote from the Royal Charter of 1663, which guarantees religious liberty and invites an open society:

Know ye, that we, being willing to encourage the hopeful undertaking of our said loyal and loving subjects, and to secure them in the free exercise and enjoyment of all their civil and religious rights, appertaining to them, as our loving subjects; and to preserve unto them that liberty.

The quotes reference a daily life of work and domesticity, contrasted within the larger context of the Charter quote. One intuits that history is mostly just an accumulation of small days, though every once in awhile someone creates a document like the Charter that has lasting consequence.

Approximately 15 people, including Lin, made several trips to a highway-side site in East Providence, Rhode Island to examine and choose from a group of retainer stones left over from a long-ago project.

The Meeting Room, Maya Lin, Newport, RI, 2013, layout for an inscription.

Benson prepared the layout, the design and the overlay of the inscriptions while mason Jack Afonso prepared the stone surfaces. Using the overlay, John Stevens Shop employee Paul Russo then spent the next 3 months carving the work at Riverside Stone in Seekonk, Massachusetts.  After the site was prepared, the stones were carefully installed in time for the ribbon cutting in May 2013.

 
The Meeting Room, Maya Lin, Newport, RI, 2013, detail of the water table.
Photo credit: Alexander Nesbitt.

On a recent sunny spring day, visitors wandered in and around the low fieldstone foundations, sat in the sun, looked around at the city-center and read the inscriptions carved into local granite.

Lin has created an elegant template, one that respectfully references history while remaining completely contemporary. Happily, the commission also accomplishes another goal, one that might never be afforded out of public coffers, but that nevertheless may be more important for Newport in the long run: the commissioning of work by Newport’s native son, Nick Benson, a MacArthur prize winner, who is also part of the city’s continuing legacy.

Like most places, Newport is complicated, yet it is mainly a daily place, a place that has sustained jelly making, raising the sail and the carving of stone for centuries.

By Elizabeth Keithline

For more information: 

http://www.johnstevensshop.com/

http://artnewengland.com/ed_columns/maya-lin-breaking-ground-in-newport/

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/29/arts/design/doris-duke-memorial-plan-by-maya-lin-splits-newports-old-guard.html?_r=0

http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2013/05/25/doris-duke-foundation-reinvents-newport-queen-anne-square/TvFm9qwW6oFqh41ijNY8cP/story.html

http://queenannesquare.com/about/

http://www.judithdupre.com/2007/11/06/nick-benson-interview/

http://sos.ri.gov/library/history/charter/

Frozen Piano on Lake Nipissing, 2014. Photo: Gordon Monahan

2014 marked the tenth anniversary of Ice Follies, a biennial exhibition of site-specific art situated in the city of North Bay, about 200 miles north of Toronto, and staged in the depths of winter out on the icy surface of Lake Nipissing, around which the city curls. Founded by North Bay-based artist and curator Dermot Wilson (who was also then director of the local public art gallery), it was inspired by the architecture of the ice huts of fisherman that dot the ice through the winter. In his years heading up Ice Follies, Wilson brought together local, national and internationally prominent artists (like Peter Van Tiesenhausen, Kim Adams, Ernest Daetwyler, Susan Detwiler, and FASTWÜRMS, as a few) who created pieces out on the snow-covered ice of the lake.

Seeing Ice Follies could best be likened to something akin to embarking on a kind of pilgrimage. It’s a long drive from anywhere to North Bay, and once there, seeing the work itself out on the snow-covered ice can involve some rather intense physical commitment. Though pieces have never been situated overly far from the shoreline of the lake, trudging through soft, knee-deep snow to crawl into, say, Peter Van Tiesenhausen’s tiny snow cave that framed a contemplative view of a featureless horizon of sky and snow, or to climb your way up an enormous mound of snow and then back down into Simon Frank’s Hut was to necessarily say “yes” to what’s been aesthetically shaped out on a cold, windy northern lake. And being wet and cold has always been part of the package.

Frozen Piano on Lake Nipissing, 2014. Photo: Gordon Monahan

Most recently, for the 2014 event, Gordon Monahan, an internationally acclaimed sound and visual artist, created a piano-based piece that, in part, responded like an Aeolian harp to the relentless winds that sweep across the ice. (The link for Ice Follies with video footage of works can be found at http://www.icefollies.ca) Piano on Frozen Lake Nipissing was located close enough to the shoreline and a nearby parking lot that it could be heard from there. While such an at-a-distance encounter necessarily missed much, it did make the work available in part to those physically unable to make the trek out onto the ice, and managed to address, if only inadequately, the problematic issue of accessibility that has always plagued Ice Follies.

So now, with five incarnations of the event come and gone, major organizational changes are underway. The public gallery that had long been the institutional umbrella for Ice Follies has entirely severed its connections, and as a consequence Ice Follies Biennial Collective Inc. was formed in 2012 to provide administrative structure and secure funding for projects. The biggest obstacle facing Holly Cunningham, currently the Chair of the organization, is the issue of changing audiences. When Ice Follies was inaugurated back in 2004, interest and support by the community was high, but as national and international attention for subsequent exhibitions increasingly gathered steam, the interest of and participation by local and regional organizations and groups seemed to inversely decline. These days, it seems, the exhibition creates barely a ripple in the area.

Frozen Piano on Lake Nipissing, 2014. From a distance. Photo: Gordon Monahan

This is a huge concern to Cunningham and the two other cultural organizations (the artist-run organizations White Water Gallery and the Near North Media Lab, both located in North Bay) that collaborated with the Collective in producing the 2014 Follies. What’s ultimately at stake, then, is the very survival of the event. Without interested participation at any level by community groups and organizations, Ice Follies runs the risk of utter irrelevance to its host community.

And so that brings us to the here and now, with the proverbial clock ticking and just under two years left before the next incarnation of Ice Follies is scheduled to hit the ice. With the assistance of a recently received grant, Cunningham and her board of directors are in the beginning phase of a year-long re-evaluation of things, studying their options in terms of restructuring Ice Follies into a much more community-inclusive arts festival that will very likely include artist-led workshops and what Cunnigham calls “community-engaged art,” in addition to the site-specific works that have given Ice Follies its aesthetic identity.

That will leave only a year to put it all back together again, and when that happens, things may look decidedly different. The biggest change may very well involve a shift away from the curatorially shaped structure Ice Follies has always maintained (and which has been both the basis of much of its funding support at the provincial and national level, and the very reason for the interest in the exhibition nationally and internationally) and toward a process of decision-making by committee based around an open call for proposals.

There’s real risk, here, of embarking on a path toward another form of irrelevance that could very well leave Ice Follies as little more than a hollowed-out shell of what it had once been. Decision-making unmoored from focused curatorial structure could entirely gut the exhibition of what has always been its aesthetic strength.

Whatever the outcome, the lake will freeze and thaw and freeze once again before we know how this new wind will blow across it in the winter of 2016.

By Gil McElroy

Blue Poles, Sarah Sze, 2004-2006, painted steel and aluminum

In a recent interview, Alison Upitis, Assistant Curator of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s List Visual Arts Center, (LVAC), noted that it wasn’t until after World War II that MIT first committed to art on campus, reacting to a need to humanize scientists who were involved in the war effort.

MIT’s Percent-for-Art Program, formally instituted in 1968, includes big names such as Tony Smith, Sol LeWitt, Richard Fleischner, Scott Burton, Kenneth Noland, Jackie Ferrara, Candida Hofer, Sarah Sze, Matthew Ritchie, Anish Kapoor, Cai Guo-Qiang and others.

 
Blue Poles, Sarah Sze, 2004-2006, painted steel and aluminum

The program allots up to $250,000 to commission art for each new major renovation or building project on campus. If you’re a public artist, you know that this is not the biggest budget out there, but the prestige of working with MIT is such that Upitis hasn’t noted any reluctance to engage. If a commissioned artist has needed more money, MIT has raised it for them.

The selection process begins when the List receives word from the administration that a building project has been given the green light. Upitis and LVAC Director Paul C. Ha create a list of about 15 artists who they think might be a good fit. They contact the artist’s gallery for images, (in rare cases, they contact the artist directly).

Upitis and Ha present the images to a selection committee that is usually made up of professors, architects and others from the school. Unlike a public Percent-For-Art panel, where the administrator manages the process but is neutral in discussion, Upitis noted “the director and I are active participants in the committee”, so MIT’s program is sharply curated, not only in the selection of the artist, but in siting the work and creating relationships between other works of art and architecture on campus.

Together, the panel chooses three or four finalists, to whom they award a small stipend that covers a site visit and proposal. After a few months, the artists present their work, often by Skype, and the committee makes its final selection.  It can often take up to five years for a commission to wend its way through the process, but if history is any benchmark, it’s worth the time. The artists that are chosen are clearly here to stay.

Transparent Horizon, Louise Nevelson, welded Cor-ten steel, painted, 1975.

Most MIT Percent-For-Art commissions, as well other works of art not covered here, are open to the public.

For more information: http://listart.mit.edu/public_art

By Elizabeth Keithline

Images by Jed Lind, courtesy of the Toronto Sculpture Garden

It’s the way of the world, it would seem. Like every major city around the globe, Toronto has its parking problems. Streets in the downtown core simply don’t have enough space for all the vehicles, and so of course both municipal and private lots do big business. 

Back in the early 1980s, the problem became ever-so slightly worse when a small private lot in the city’s west end that had been in operation since 1938 was closed. The little slice of urban land was not to be built upon with new housing or retail establishments, however. From mundane parking lot, it was transformed into a specialized kind of garden. The Toronto Sculpture Garden (TSG), to be exact.

 
Images by Jed Lind, courtesy of the Toronto Sculpture Garden

In 2011 on the thirtieth anniversary of its advent, the TSG was, fittingly, filled with automobiles. Well, sort of. Jed Lind (b. 1978), a Canadian sculptor living and working in Los Angeles, has mounted Gold, Silver & Lead,  a tall, Brancusi-like column comprising seven sculptural automobiles stacked one atop the other. It’s a work modeled after the famous 1979 model of the Honda Civic, a car designed to be an alternative to the big, gas-guzzling vehicles on the road at the time, and which was rather expected to all but rescue Western society from the clutches of expensive Mid East oil.

Lind’s interpretation of these vehicles is aesthetically minimalistic, visually referencing only the passenger section. Stacked one atop the other, roof to roof, floor to floor, that reference comes apart at the proverbial seams as the sculpture rises up and simultaneously representationally disintegrates. At the very top, at the crowning seventh iteration of Gold, Silver & Lead’s structure, it is all but absented, become just the merest physical trace of the more entire, recognizable forms stacked below.

 
Images by Jed Lind, courtesy of the Toronto Sculpture Garden

Here we have it, then. Lind would remind us that things change; the decay of entropy, however we might try to fight it, is the inescapable norm on this, our planet (and everywhere else in our universe, for that matter). It’s not like we didn’t already know that, certainly, but Lind addresses the theme with great aesthetic intelligence and, yes, much beauty. Like a kind of mirror to the ever-changing, ever-reinvented urban space that surrounds it on all sides, Gold, Silver & Lead cleverly reflects on the transient impermanence of things, and the ever-evolving imperatives of the new as it indiscriminately acts upon technologies, communities and places, and the people that make up the one and utilize the other. All that being said, Lind’s column too will shortly succumb to the same pressures and be itself displaced courtesy the imperatives of an institutional mandate that demands the TSG reinvent itself time and again.

Because it’s the way of that world.

By Gil McElroy

“Journée des Barricades”, 2008, Heather & Ivan Morison. Photo: Stephen Rowe

Let’s forget for once monumental bronze sculptures and large permanent memorials. Let municipalities and those who fund art projects for the community get convinced that a work of public art may be small in size, humble in its presentation or, what is more amazing, ephemeral, and yet a landmark in the memory of a city. Claire Doherty, curator, editor and author of several publications on contemporary art and public space is convinced of this. Since more than a decade she’s been leading “Situations”, an organization established in Bristol (UK), which commissions and produces public art projects in England and internationally. On a recent tour in several Australian cities where she presented some of their projects, Doherty made clear which are her priorities in the field of public art when at the beginning of her lecture was wondering how many gardeners and food producers were in the audience apart from the usual artists, curators, etc. And the best part is that yes there were.

There are two key words in the artistic proposals curated by “Situations”: space and time. The first one, conceived from a dynamic point of view rather than a physical location that leaves a trace or addition to the landscape, invites artists to “contribute to the lived experience of a place.” Space is not the determining factor for the realization of a work, but it is one among several elements to take into account (such as the audience or certain circumstances in the life of a city). Regarding the second, the temporal component covers several aspects like the duration of the work itself, which does not necessarily have to be permanent, or the public time, that one which is built by the public itself, by the viewers with their own presence or participating in actions that will pass into the memory of the community. In short, the context acquires an essential importance as it re-imagines “place as a situation, a set of circumstances, geographical location, historical narrative, group of people or social agenda”. It is the setting in which an art project is developed and can take many forms, from installation to a collective or interactive action.

We are talking about a kind of artistic interventions that challenge the concept of “site-specific”. The excessive attachment of this term to place is insufficient “to define practices that best suit new terms that deal with the complexities of context –amongst them context-specific host, oriented site, site-responsive and socially engaged”, according to Doherty’s words. Nevertheless it is also necessary to refine the latter, the social aspect, in the sense of prioritizing the creation of a spirit of community above a work focused on a predefined audience. A good example is “Nowhereisland” (2012), by Alex Hartley, an island from the Arctic that journeyed around the South West region of England during the Cultural Olympiad in 2012. In every little port where it stopped as a “migrant nation” thousands of people gathered to celebrate its visit and up to 23,000 got the citizenship. But “Nowhereisland” is more than an amazing sculptural project, it also included a program of resident thinkers from different backgrounds who reflected on art and society, as well as an embassy, which consisted on a mobile museum accompanying Nowhereisland throughout its trip, gathering information about the history and information about this new nation. It had also resources for schools in order to inspire students to think on subjects such as citizenship, Land Art and myths. The website offers comprehensive information from the very beginning of the project: http://nowhereisland.org

“Nowhereisland”, 2012, Alex Hartley

Another aspect I would like to underline of this innovative approach to public art is that it not only doesn’t neglect the more conventional media such as sculpture or installation but promotes them giving a twist to the traditional way of presenting them. This is especially clear in the appealing event that took place in different cities of New Zealand during one year between 2008 and 2009. “One Day sculpture” invited 23 artists to make public interventions only during 24 hours. Particularly important in this approach was the questioning of public sculpture in terms of permanence and monumentality, and propose new definitions that include aspects such as criticism, space, performativity and intervention.

 
The New Rules of Public Art, 2013. Photo: Situations.
Click on thumbnail to see larger image.

Recently, these ideas have been summarized in the form of an ingenious “do’s and don’ts” of public art whose first rule provides title to this post, followed by another 11 statements as appealing as “Do not make it for a community. Create a community”, “Do not embellish. Interrupt” or “Welcome outsiders.”

Projects driven by “Situations” disrupt the status quo, impelling the commissioners to seek alternatives to conventional public art. In parallel, they develop an equally important theoretical, pedagogical and critical work, organizing workshops, surveys and public research processes as well as evaluation reports of the projects. Apart from publications there is also a complete website where you can find comprehensive information on each project as well as “commissioned responses” by different authors. One of the last works in which they are embedded is a research led by the Psychosocial Research Unit at the University of Centre Lancashire that explores public responses and associations with two recent, and very different, public artworks that have been in the town of Ilfracombe in 2012: Damien Hirst’s “Verity,” a permanent artwork, and the aforementioned “Nowhereisland”, which visited the town in September 2012. We are very curious about the result.

By Paula Llull

More info:

http://www.situations.org.uk
http://www.onedaysculpture.org.nz
http://www.damienhirst.com/verity

Critical Fail, 2011 by Tonya McMullan

Even when considered separately from specific geographies, public art is a loaded concept. All too often communities and collectivity are prescribed and  “defined” in a large-scale permanent commission, which quickly ages into a relic of something it never quite was. 

The regeneration of post-industrial cities in the British Isles has maintained a tradition of shiny modernist structures, each a variant of minimalistic shape and aspirational title. In some ways it can feel like an attempt of illustrating a progression – where materials were once used for manufacturing purposes, they sit, occupying and present in space for the vague higher purpose of art.

In Belfast these public works carry the dual filter of the commercial and socio-political regeneration that follows its current prescript status of Post-Conflict. In the last 10 years works such as Beacon of Hope, Spire of Hope, Rise and Spirit of Belfast have positioned themselves in the city, and all embody vague notions of advancement. Dawning spheres and skyward needles show ambition in scale, if not specifics; visually they draw upon similar work in the other cities of Ireland and Great Britain, in keeping with a reduced aesthetic of a bland future utopia.

Rise Sculpture, Broadway Roundabout, Belfast” © User:Keresaspa / Wikimedia Commons/CC-BY-SA-3.0. photo taken 2011

 

The definition of space and society through large-scale public art seems not an attempt to please everyone so much as to offend no one: when based upon concepts like hope and collective spirit, the public – whomever that may be – cannot find fault, particularly in something that elicits little response. Instead there may be frustrations at cost, along with the feeling that, whilst the work may have no individual relevance to them, at least it is present, at least investment is being placed into something, and perhaps it relates to somebody, somewhere.

Whilst the majority of these public sculptures were fabricated in the middle of the last decade, for the most part they are unfortunately not only remnants of an old approach.  All too often there is little evidence of advancement in the beliefs of what’s fit for public consumption in Northern Ireland. Last year’s temporary land art commission by the Belfast Festival at Queens, the WISH project, continued to confuse the punch of scale with quality: the face of an anonymous Belfast girl, again apparently hopeful, was marked upon a huge expanse of wasteland using lines of earth, sand and stones. In keeping with more permanent metallic works sited on roundabouts or thoroughfares, WISH was not an experience on the ground. One had to rely on PR images or fly out of the city to see it.

The WISH project has striking visual parallels to the Not A Bug Splat project realized this month in the Khyber Puhtoonkhwa Region of Pakistan. Sited in an area that faces many drone attacks, the work references military slang for those killed at long range, and aims to raise awareness of child casualties with a large-scale photograph of an anonymous young child who was orphaned by drones. This viral image brought worldwide attention to the current situation of this place, and perhaps gave pause to those operating drones in the region by providing the face that long ranges do not register. This project uses the ubiquity and worldwide desensitization of war photography by providing a new medium and a new type of image that is needed and relevant to this time; and in this instance, her anonymity becomes emblematic of the current situation of those living in the region, whilst providing some kind of collective identity in the media. In contrast, within the very different context of the WISH project, the anonymity of the young child seemed more of a cloak of vague sentimentality, awkwardly placed within the PR of aftermath. For its audience of media photographers, it is more of a mask than a face.

“Critical Fail”, 2011, Tonya McMullan. Courtesy of artist.

 

In spite of the somewhat reductive nature of the work, the transient nature of WISH made the project fairly unique. The ongoing pressure to reduce art’s reliance on government funding, combined with an emphasis on longevity and legacy to ensure monetary value, often make time-based visual art rare beyond the projects of designated gallery spaces. With Belfast Festival at Queens slashed corporate and European funding in 2014, further departures from the permanence of the council-placed tender application may be once more placed further out of reach – and yet, as scale reduces and tacts must change, can we at least place more trust in an appetite for subtle, nuanced public artwork?

The misalignment between public art and the individual deepens when considered alongside the way in which the majority of artists in Belfast actually work: often adopting a personal scale to some degree, and wary of permanence and art as a definition and full stop. With so little progression in thinking for public work beyond the hazy concept of Hope For The Future, artists working on the ground have instead built upon the platitudes so monumentously presented to explore their deeper implications.

In the debate surrounding the WISH project, artists and writers Daniel Jewebury and Dan Shipsides shaped an argument against generic statements of post-conflict in both the Public Art in Belfast website and the Queen’s festival website. In bringing a discontent to light this at least introduces the possibility of a different sensitivity in new publicly funded commissions.

“WORLDCLASS (streetview)”, 2013, Jacqueline Holt. Courtesy of artist.

 

Until tenders are pursued that adopt a new approach for public art in Belfast, artists can at least interrupt what already exists. Jacqueline Holt’s photo WORLDCLASS (Streetview)] 2013, plays visually with the concepts surrounding the PR language and graphics of public art. Taking the medium in which we most prominently experience the city’s mostly inaccessible public art – ironically, the digital photograph – Holt’s ground-level view of WISH is a tongue-in-cheek question of what’s present, experienced and spoken in this rhetoric.

Tonya McMullan has also worked with a playful response to the officiousness of public art, staging an intervention at The Spirit of Belfast. When the structure was blocked off, undergoing assessment due to its failing self-support, the artist added her own disruption to the piece. With Critical Fail, 2011 McMullan, like Holt, aligns global and digital notions with specific spatial politics. Playing on the popular “fail” meme, the intervention is made to be photographed and circulated online – not unlike the sculpture itself, or indeed, most other pieces of public art, in a city so aware of hypothetical eyes that look in.

By Dorothy Hunter