Public Spaces: Size Matters!

(My blog title says “Rochester Art Review” but I’ve spent months now talking about gardens, art and events in North Carolina. Should I rename the site? Reopen a second one that deals strictly with “the south?” Does it matter?)

I took a side trip to Asheville last week. It’s a beautiful small city in the Smokey Mountains steeped in surprising architectural richness, a deep history of both traditional and contemporary art and crafts, and a liberal acceptance of racial and sexual diversity. The University of North Carolina has a large campus in Asheville: there’s a major teaching hospital that’s always expanding. The Biltmore is there – the closest “castle” we have on the U.S. eastern seaboard (open to the public, still in the private hands of a Vanderbilt whose family built this estate) with grounds designed by Frederick Law Olmstead - one of his grandest achievements along with Central Park, NYC.

A newer attraction in Asheville is the North Carolina Arboretum.

The arboretum was planned during the 1980’s, built in the late 1990’s, and added to every year since – the newest room/garden, the Bonsai Exhibition Garden, was installed in 2005.

I love visiting gardens and I especially adore stonework. North Carolina is full of stone; it gets used often and well and in this arboretum, the stonework is magnificent. I don’t know of many projects built since the 1930s WPA projects that have featured such beautiful stonework – evidence of so much hand labor – or such top quality materials showcased in a public project.

But (here it comes!), it costs over $5 million to keep the gates open (according to its 2008 annual report) and 58% of that $ comes from the state of NC. If my calculations are correct, for every person who stops to visit (entrance fee is $8), NC taxpayers shell out approx. $15. This at a time when the State is nearly broke and libraries and schools are closing.

What bothered me even more was the nagging feeling that this garden was simply not appropriate for its setting. Really now, how can a prissy little patch of annuals compete with the grandeur of those mountains? Yes, there are hiking trails but the area is sitting astride one of our nation’s ultimate hiking trails. Presumably, part of the goal of this venture is to teach students natural history of the region (Bonsai? A part of the regional history?) And ecology but everywhere I looked, I saw the result of continuing intensive labor – pruning, pollarding, pleaching.

I’ve often been at the front of the line pleading for beauty, art, and good design in public spaces. With that advocacy must come responsibility: appropriateness to setting and history both past and future. Where is Olmstead when you most need that vision?

AN ART-WARMING STORY

I never heard of Felrath Hines until this morning. He was born in 1913 in Indianapolis and while working as a dining car waiter, took his first painting lessons in his 20s. He entered the Chicago Institute of Art when he was 31.

Hines ultimately became a conservator at the Museum of Modern Art, then chief conservator at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., and retired as chief conservator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. He died at 79 in 1993.

For all those years, he continued to paint, seldom exploiting exhibition opportunities that he surely had. When he was invited by the Whitney Museum to exhibit in a show called “Contemporary Black Artists in America” (the exhibit helped catapult his friend Romare Bearden and other black artists to the spotlight), he declined saying “I don't want to be pigeon-holed as a black artist.” Instead, he quietly stacked finished work in the attic of the home he shared with his wife and family.

Last summer the Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, N.C., mounted a retrospective of his “color balance” paintings to good reviews and his widow continues to donate his work to the Ackland Art Museum at the U. of N.C. in Chapel Hill. All this makes a good story. But it’s not the end (at least, for today.)

Lawrence Toppman covers art and culture for the Charlotte “Observer.” He and his schoolteacher wife saw that Durham exhibit and fell head over elbow for Hines’ paintings and began tracing connections to a gallery source in New York City. After various failed tries of contacting the gallery through modern electronics, they climbed aboard a plane for New York City for a weekend search. The SoHo gallery had closed.

This is a news reporter after all; he wasn’t ready to give up. Next he contacted a Nasher Museum employee who put the Toppmans in touch with Hines’ widow. The couple took a week of vacation time, flew to Massachusetts (in February…in the snow…in one of the worst winters that area has had in years!) for a visit and left carrying their very own watercolor original.

To make the purchase even more interesting, they hand-carried the painting aboard the plane but the it didn’t fit under the seat or above in the luggage rack. The idea of checking it and watching it hurled into the hold of the plane was rejected out of hand and so they ended up purchasing a third seat and belted their new baby safely in for the ride back to Charlotte.

Toppmans are a two-income family but together, no one could call a school teacher and local news writer “wealthy.” They must have swallowed hard before taking the plunge (Hines' oil paintings generally sell in the $5 - $10,000 range - watercolors on paper, substantially less. ) Yet, they went to these extremes to own a small bit of paper with some painted triangles that was produced by someone they had never heard of until last summer purely because they connected spiritually with that work.

Just when I’m falling into the abyss of art cynicism, here comes a hook that brings me off the cliff. I’ve never met the Topphams but I love them instinctively and I love their story.

Happy March!

A PEARL WORTH KEEPING

Bishopville, South Carolina, is a tiny town about two hours by car from my home near Charlotte, North Carolina. Pearl Fryar lives there. His house is brick, single story - a typical southern 50’s suburban style - sitting on 3 acres of mostly flat yard, a yard that Pearl - all by himself - has turned into an explosion of topiary and sculpture.

When Pearl was 40, he decided to enter a local garden contest. He had no formal training – not in horticulture, art, marketing, or gardening design. He was “handy.” He had a full-time job that paid a living wage with full benefits (it was the 1970s) and a wife who obviously loved and trusted her husband.

She needed all that because the next thing she knew, she was looking out her window at her husband, standing on top of a 14 foot ladder with a chain saw in his hands about to carve up a spruce tree. That was the beginning.

Pearl said “Success is determined by hard work. Nothing good ever comes out of negative thinking.”

In his book OUTLIERS, Malcolm Gladwell refers to a magical 10,000 hours, the necessary experimentation investment to achieve success in nearly any given field. It was the time The Beatles spent honing their music ears in German bars before returning to England with the sound that would send them to the world music stage. It was the hours that teen age Bill Gates spent isolated with a university computer absorbing and pushing the limits of a foreign technology.

Pearl would know all about that. He’s been at this hobby for over thirty years. A few years ago, he was “discovered” by gardeners of America, HGTV, and Martha Stewart. PBS filmed a documentary of his life and art (the movie was subsequently shown in independent theaters) and his topiary was included in an important university review of North American folk art.

Now tour buses regularly drive down Main Street, Bishopville, en route to his house expecting to walk through the garden and perhaps find Pearl, now crowding 80 years old, standing on a ladder clipping a wayward green branch. His wife will tell you that's where he spends most of his days.

This Friday night, Pearl will speak at the Cornelius Art Center (N.C.) where a photographic exhibit of his lawn/yard/garden/outdoor gallery is on view throughout February. Unfortunately, I can’t be there to hear him but that’s all right. His life choices speak loudly enough for me.

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One huge problem with outdoor spaces such as Pearl’s: what happens when the creative genius is gone? Who protects the work from unsympathetic chain saw wielders?

Recently, The National Garden Conservancy took responsibility and has added the Pearl Fryar outdoor gallery to its list of national treasures. The NGC does what it can with limited resources. Consider helping them with a $$$ donation.

NEW BEGINNINGS

The holidays are over. Ready or not, we are launched into 2011. I don’t believe in New Year’s resolutions but I do believe in new beginnings and always, new ideas.

Spending time with people outside my own age-geographic-political persuasion spurs me to investigate alien territory. My grandchildren play this role. I always assumed that “cinnamons” were little red, hard, hot candies but now I know that my grandsons are cinnamons - red heads.

I wore a new necklace last week and my daughter, Holley, (the font of all things trendy) said, “Mom, you’ve got a steampunk necklace.” (The necklace: an old domino, various nuts and springs, an antique typewriter letter all threaded on black rubber.)

Obvious question: what is steampunk? That led to neo-Victorian. Wow! Here comes a bunch of those intertwining threads that somehow I’d observed but not connected.

Victorians embraced nature (but “embraced” may be too kind. “Control” is better.) They incorporated examples of the natural world in all design and art. Dark wood, lots of metal (industrial?) – often transposing hard with soft, i.e. lace, velvet, industrial played against the softness and beauty of nature.

So what have we been seeing these past couple of years? The photographs I’ve found are a beginning. So was the headline in the style section of the newspaper “It’s the Year of Velvet.” Now that we have a category, look around and you’ll start seeing neo-Victorian cropping up everywhere.

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This is a time to stop and consider the blessings of this past year. Here is my partial list. Please make your own.

1) Observing first hand the wild North Carolina wisteria in bloom

2) The color taupe

3) Watching the international space station cross the black sky with my grands

4) Lucy and Abbey who finally stopped chewing up oriental rugs

5) Finding buyers for slightly used oriental rugs

6) M&Ms

7) “Winter’s Bone” – my pick for best movie of the year

8) Creative people (you know who you are)

Happy New Year, dear friends.

PICTURE SHOWS

I just saw the newly released version of “True Grit” and when I got home, playing on Turner Classic Movie channel, was the original 1969 version of the same movie. I remember seeing the John Wayne Oscar winning performance 40 years ago and wondered how closely the new release followed the old.

The obvious difference? The Coen brothers production is darker. People are dirty with oily hair and rumpled clothes. No pretty vistas - most scenes are set in semi- or total darkness. Men are regularly shot, hanged or otherwise physically violated and with true-to-life special effects, it’s all effectively gruesome. (In the original, John was never completely convincing as an old, has-been drunkard. The second banana Texas Ranger played by Glen Campbell (yes, the singer!) never got his hair mussed and the young girl was clever but also sweet as pie and cute as a button. Is that Robert Duval as the bad guy who gets shot, wallows around in the dust but gets up with totally clean shirt and pants?)

With all this grit in the NV, the rhythms of speech underscore the nearly foreign nature of its time and place. Language is nearly “old English” – no contractions – a jarring formality to the violence. I don’t know what to make of all this but I’m pretty sure it signals something significant about our times and tastes – in entertainment as in art.

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Chip and I came back to Rochester ten days ago to celebrate the holidays with family and friends and check on progress of the new kitchen finished just hours before we arrived. The kitchen is fabulous! But we have done less celebrating than imagined unless you count painting said kitchen and cleaning construction dust from every possible nook in the townhouse.

But nice surprises happen in spite of our mislaid plans; that’s one of the gifts of city living. We stopped for breakfast one morning last week and met Francie and Robert Marx – total serendipity! They are interesting, charming people and it is always a pleasure to spend time with them.

I’ve been thinking about women and politics lately. With more information comes deepening depression. Then Francie sent me this picture. Robert paints “portraits” but rarely of real subjects. He made an exception for Dorothy. How could Dorothy not be thrilled with the resulting painting? Robert has crowned her Queen Dorothy and I can’t help believing that in his world, he would give most every woman at least a small tiara.

Merry Christmas.

Tower of Babel ...and other musings

Lydia Musco had a solo exhibit of her work last year at Davidson College. Lydia lives in Massachusetts. Transporting her 8ft. tall sculptures to the North Carolina gallery must have taken some doing. These things are constructed of thin stacks of paper pulp, concrete and wood.

The simplest are single four-sided columns. Others are two or more columns, shuffled together. They twirl and teeter and it’s the tension and texture that you notice right off. Next you might notice that the twirls are part of a dance – or maybe a fight to stay upright.

I just finished reading “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann. The novel includes the story of tightrope walker Philippe Petit who stunned New York City when he walked between the two World Trade Center towers then under construction (1974). It was an act that was beautiful and frighteningly repellent – amazing and crazy – a “fuck you” finger pointed to God and a prayer of thanks for the gift of movement.

Lydia is a young artist. She has lots of practice time left. I hope she has the courage and tenacity to keep pushing at the intersection between beauty and disaster.

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National columnist Neal Peirce came to lecture in Rochester in the early 1990’s. The Coalition for Downtown brought him. We were all hot to push metropolitan government, erasing lines between the City and suburbia and Peirce wrote a compelling argument in his book CITYSTATES.

The argument never got far and now, nearly 20 years later, with every government budget sinking in red ink, we in Upstate New York are still not persuaded to give up our patch of identity.

Today’s Charlotte Observer ran a current Pierce column titled “How to avert a new Crisis in Suburbia.” He quotes analyst Jonathan Miller and the 2011 edition of “Emerging Trends in Real Estate” extensively. Miller claims that tract mansions are the Hummers of real estate, as obsolete as the cars. He says that foreclosures are greatest in these fringe suburbs and that the group most able to purchase such dinosaurs is marching off to downsize and the buyers on the way in (ages 30 –45) are not interested in that lifestyle choice. Besides, there are too few of them.

He claims that the changing tides will usher in a “Fix-up, Re-model, Expand, and Condominium Era” and that realtors and government planners must catch up.

Well!!!

Far Out!

On Sunday, I decided to cruise new art exhibits in town. Memorial Art Gallery just opened “Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the 1960s.” Rochester Contemporary Art Center is in mid-run of “Geometries: Recent works by Christopher McNulty and Andy Gilmore.” Both shows are masterfully installed and (coincidentally) speak to each other.

I walked into the main gallery at MAG and was immediately drowned in vibrating color, pattern and light and thought "I really need to bring my grandkids to see this." Then I thought "they see this stuff all the time - t.v. shows, games, teen clubs, Strong Museum". And that's my biggest problem with this show - the art hasn't aged well. Psychedelic imagery sold t-shirts, Grateful Dead record albums and "Hair" playbills. It was "sock it to me" backdrop. It may be nostalgic fun but I'm not sure it deserves much reverence.

Now for the BIG STATEMENT: Any time anybody frames "art", hangs it on a big museum wall and trains a spotlight on it...then has guards walking around to insure a hushed semi-religious environment!...poor Mr. and Mrs. Everybody assumes this stuff must be important. The older I get the more determined I am to say "hogwash!" Does that mean our art museum must be more careful about exhibit choices? Yes! Can they still have a review of art from the 60's? Yes again.
But perhaps a sprinkle of silly dust might bring the whole thing into perspective. At least, that what the artists of those times wanted viewers to believe.

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RoCo has become a really class act. Show installations are first rate - a hard-fought professionalism is evident everywhere in this uptown space. I applaud the work they do even if I don't always like the artwork they present. The current show ("Geometries") LOOKS good

but the optical color patterns by Andy Gilmore are hyped up images that fit easily into the MAG show. After the first OH! comes the hum.

Christopher McNulty's drawings are of the obsessive school and really, are we all getting a tiny bit weary of the whole multiple deal? He uses little pencil marks to create big circles...the number of dots significant (to him) of his life expectancy. The large wall piece pictured above was created from patterns left on 6 x 6 pieces of paper, taped over his car tail pipe.

Ego-centric artwork - galleries and museums are full of it! Art students want their work to tell their story/their experience. Teenaged super-stars publish their memoirs with revisions written in their mid-twenties. We've taught this generation that their every thought is profound. It is individualism run amok.

I agree that all art is autobiographical but historically, artists channel larger issues - universal puzzles, life and death questions - through their particular eye. I'm looking for that transcendence.

Or am I just getting old and crotchety? (Chip answers "yes.")