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If one
purpose of art is to provoke, Jessica Stockholder hit the mark with
her “Ground Cover Season,” on view at Phillips Academy this
spring and summer. Stockholder, who is head of Yale University’s
sculpture department, invoked a flurry of debate on the campus as
she worked with Lawrence students to readorn the tranquil lawn west
of Main Street. Created by architect Charles Platt in 1928 for the
purpose of framing a view that extends all the way to Mount Wachusett
in Central Massachusetts, this is the patch of greenery loftily known
as the Vista. Its violation would amount to Andover sacrilege.
The presence of a plastic-covered chair and sofa, brightly painted
gravel, bleachers and tarred walkways, not to mention a dirty bathtub
and spray-painted shrubs, so provoked a handful of students that they
put together a “Save the Vista” movement whose concerns
were aired in The Phillipian, Andover’s student weekly.
Other students rallied to Stockholder’s defense, seeing the installation
as a fascin-ating statement about the tension between public and private
space, between the natural and the artificial. What the artist accomplished,
they noted, was to take an environment they walked through every day
of their lives and force them to look at it in a more creative way.
Moreover, the project helped spark a virtually unprecedented campus-wide
discussion of important questions relating to the nature of art.
But whether one thought Stockholder’s work was a creation of
genius, a catalyst for meaningful conversation or an untidy outrage,
campus purists needn’t have worried.
According to Addison Gallery director Adam Weinberg, “Ground
Cover Season” and all the other works created for SiteLines:
Art on Main, are temporary. When the show closes on Sept. 29, you
won’t even know Stockholder’s parlor suite and its attendant
paraphernalia were ever there.
And that may be just the point of SiteLines, says Weinberg, former
senior curator of New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art,
who noted a paucity of outdoor art at PA in his first Andover job
interview three years ago and was cautioned that even mentioning public
art inevitably invites controversy.
“Outdoor art on a permanent basis can be problematic,” he
admits. “Before a work is installed, people have to be certain
they are comfortable enough with it and interested enough in it that
it will bear long-term scrutiny by a diverse range of constituents.”
Still, by the time he’d signed his name to his academy contract,
Weinberg was determined to bring art into the streets of Andover—even
if it meant taking it out again later. Grasping the importance to
PA of community outreach, Weinberg hatched the idea of inviting a
team of nationally renowned artists to create a series of public,
but temporary, art installations that would straddle Main Street from
the Vista to the far end of Andover Center—about a mile. Building
upon the Addison’s educational component, he decided to work
closely with Julie Bernson, the gallery’s community education
coordinator, to involve students and teachers not only from PA, but
also from the Andover and Lawrence Public Schools. |
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With
the help of a grant from the Surdna Foundation—a New York-based
funder specifically interested in linking kids with working artists—as
well as from AT&T, local foundations and individual donors, the
Addison succeeded in attracting participation by nine important artists.
How important? Well, Boston Globe art critic Christine Temin, in her
pull-no-punches style, started her article on the exhibition like
this: “Mark Dion, Arthur Ganson, Mel Kendrick, Jason Middlebrook,
Lee Mingwei, Abelardo Morell, Jessica Stockholder, Nari Ward, Andrea
Zittel. These are among the most sought-after contemporary artists
on the planet.”
Each was given a modest $15,000 budget, a small stipend and a mandate
to work with students on the creation of outdoor art that responded
to the area’s history, geography and culture. To Weinberg’s
delight, the artists were so intrigued by the challenge that over
the past two years they eagerly spent days, weeks and in some cases
as much as a month on the scene. Students, too, immersed themselves
in the project, contributing in ways that ranged from brainstorming
ideas to performing hands-on construction tasks, from scouting out
objects for inclusion in installations to leading guided tours. In
addition to Andover High, Lawrence High, Andover’s Doherty Middle
School, the Essex Art Center of Lawrence and the Greater Lawrence
Technical School, the project required close collaboration with the
Memorial Hall Library of Andover and the Andover Historical Society.
By the time SiteLines opened on May 4, more than 700 people—including
artists, students, teachers, community liaisons, gallery staffers,
financial sponsors, even PA buildings and grounds workers—had
contributed in some significant way to developing and embodying the
nine artists’ ideas. Their names are listed on plaques mounted
at the entrance to the gallery.
Beyond the street installations, a complementary show titled InSite
appeared in the Addison through July 31. Arranged by curator Allison
Kemmerer, it was designed to amplify the public’s understanding
of the nine artists. In addition, money was raised to commission Emmy-winning
filmmaker Alice Markowitz to prepare a documentary on SiteLines.
Through InSite, the Addison succeeded in attracting visitors who had
never been inside the gallery before. “For some people in the
Andover and Lawrence communities, and even for some Phillips Academy
students, the Addison can seem a little remote,” Weinberg says.
“They think of it as a temple on the hill. Through SiteLines
and InSite, I think we have managed to make art and the artistic process
seem more inclusive.”
Indeed, at the May 4 SiteLines opening, celebrated in a festival of
student-performed music and dance along Main Street, a man approached
Bernson to say, “I’ve lived in Andover for 30 years, and
I’ve never seen anything this wonderful.”
“Even the people who don’t understand what we’re doing
think it’s really neat that we are doing it,” Bernson says.
“For me, the pleasure has been in connecting the artists with
the students in such a way that the artists are inspired by the students
and the students are inspired by the artists.” |
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| A teacher
in the graduate studio art program at Hunter College in New York,
Mel Kendrick ’67
is known for multi-faceted sculptures, often formed from a single
piece of wood. For his SiteLines project, dedicated to past PA history
teacher Dudley Fitts, Kendrick visited the Andover tree dump and selected
a massive tree fragment which he brought to a Haverhill sawmill and
cut apart with an eight-foot chain saw. By Weinberg’s account,
“He cored it, taking out the inside of the tree in pieces, then
reassembled both the outside and inside like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
What he ended up with are two separate sculptures that are related,
but different. If you used the big one as a mold to make a plaster
cast, what you got out of it would be the other one. It’s really
interesting to see how the shapes took on a nearly human form. They
have an almost classical flavor.” |
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| Andrea
Zittel,
a social science-minded artist (shown at right) who like Stockholder
teaches at Yale, titled her project “sfnwvlei” (something
for nothing with very little effort involved). To create it, she had
students save their trash, which they then mulched and pulped and
poured into metal forms set up to dry in the sun along Old Campus
Road. Later, we learn, the contents can be turned into decorative
wall panels. For now, what the viewer sees is two dozen post-mounted
steel trays containing what resembles a cross between red adobe and
blushing brownies. Her point? The printed exhibition guide says the
installation is “less about a finished artwork than it is about
process” and that the resulting panels are “reminiscent
of the utopian designs for living created by the early 20th-century
experiments of Bauhaus and Russian constructivist artists.” In
other words, from our own garbage we can generate beauty and luxury. |
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| Brooklyn-based
Jason Middlebrook
is known for outdoor installations that often comment upon what he
sees as contemporary society’s ambivalence toward nature. For
his SiteLines project, “What to Look for,” he decided to
turn the campus and downtown into a sort of nature preserve where
guests are invited to sit on strategically sited benches and read
text from descriptive placards like the one above while gazing out
on the wildlife of the region. Beyond noting Andover’s squirrels
and birds and butterflies, the placards point out other life forms:
the SUVs, the mini-vans, the Gap- and Abercrombie & Fitch-clothed
homo sapiens inhabiting the area. Student participation in Middlebrook’s
project entailed deciding what items should be highlighted as well
as surveying public and private school kids about their favorite things,
their hopes, their dreams and their expectations. (For the record,
when asked how they see themselves in their mid-20s, more kids from
both groups said “famous” than “married.”) In
front of Andover’s old town hall, Middlebrook took the metaphor
a step further, constructing a platform on which the audience could
stand and watch the passersby. Says Weinberg, “This inverts the
usual model of art, in which sculpture is set up on a pedestal. In
this case, you are on the pedestal, and the art is all around you.”
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| Taipei-born
Lee Mingwei’s
work generally focuses on the ritual of everyday activities that define
our culture, such as eating, sleeping and letter-writing. For SiteLines,
he came up with the idea of the Mosquito Cinema, an outdoor theatre
where movies typifying American culture could be shown on Saturday
nights. The “cinema” is actually a white screen mounted
on the outside wall of Kemper Auditorium, and students at PA and Andover
High participated in the design of its miniature marquee, a projection
booth and paper fans used to advertise the films—not to mention
swat bugs. The artistic backbone of the project, however, was in the
selection by students of the defining films. Their picks? Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Dead Poets Society; Pay It Forward; Rush Hour;
Save the Last Dance; The Wizard of Oz; Shrek; Clueless; The Truman
Show; The Princess Bride; Citizen Kane; Ferris Bueller’s Day
Off; Remember the Titans; and Forrest Gump. |
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| Harlem
artist Nari Ward, who
like Kendrick teaches at Hunter College, put a new spin on color with
his installation “Pathmarker.” In it, he set out with a
team of student helpers to build and provision a series of “shopping
carts” featuring items peculiar to various ethnic stereotypes.
The five carts, shown at right and in the inset photo, are labeled
“Buy White,” “Buy Black,” “Buy Yellow,”
“Buy Red” and “Buy Gold.” Painted to match each
theme, they represent an ironic twist on the street vendors’
carts Ward remembers from his Jamaican childhood. In the “artese”
of the exhibition brochure, “This project points out the relationship
between social constructs and consumerism as well as the ways in which
the marketing of products informs (or misinforms) our understanding
of a cultural group.” Among the dozens of articles students selected
for inclusion in the white-painted cart are blonde hair dye, toy money
and Martha Stewart Living magazine, not to mention pale “flesh”-colored
Band-Aid strips. The black cart features cotton balls, Aunt Jemima
syrup, hair relaxers, basketballs and soul music CDs. Buying red involves
beaded jewelry, colored feathers, fishing gear and Jack Daniels whiskey,
while the yellow cart stocks instant noodles, plastic chopsticks and
a box decorated with the Buddha. Those going for the gold can browse
through artifacts that include Goya corn meal, salsa, a rag doll from
Aruba and candles bearing likenesses of Jesus and Our Lady of Guadeloupe.
While the carts make serious points, they were also fun to assemble,
Ward says, noting, “I was looking for a project children could
be excited about.” |
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| For
centuries, artists and scientists have fooled around with a device
known as the camera obscura—literally, dark room. If one allows
just a pinprick of light into a blackened chamber, it brings with
it inverted images of what is outside the chamber. OK, that sounds
silly—and if you’ve never had the chance to sit inside a
camera obscura, we don’t blame you for not believing us. The
only cure for it is to get yourself through the front door of Memorial
Hall Library at the corner of Main and Central streets before Sept.
29, hang a sharp left and enter Cuban-born artist Abelardo
Morell’s SiteLines installation. There, in the cool
darkness, you’ll see Andover’s Elm Square in full motion,
live, in color, and upside-down. We promise. As part of the SiteLines
project, Morell also worked with students from the Essex Art Center
and Lawrence High to make camera obscura photographs in several historic
mill buildings for inclusion in the InSite exhibition. |
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Nari Ward’s “Pathmarker”
carts, shown outside the Addison, take a wry spin on the Jamaican
street vendors’ wagons the artist knew in his childhood.
Student performers add spirit to
the May SiteLines festivities. |
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| “When
Jessica Stockholder’s
piece ‘Ground Cover Season’ took shape, some people complained
that it looked like someone had dumped a lot of junk on the Vista,”
Weinberg allows. “But when you walk up to it and take the time
to look, it’s really striking.” While most people think
of landscape as a form of sculpture, the Yale-based sculptor treated
the outdoors as a canvas on which to paint. What she’s trying
to do, Weinberg explains, is change the viewer’s expectations.
By including household items, she emphasizes the tension between public
and private and between the natural and the manufactured. “The
paths she created are a duplication of paths in West Quad,” the
director adds, “but the difference is that these paths don’t
go anywhere. They lead out sort of toward the horizon. Between the
empty chairs and couches and these bright-colored paths that go nowhere,
it’s a bit like Waiting for Godot. You sit there within the picture
and wait for something that never quite happens.” Student participation
in the project included suggesting elements, making a site plan, and
helping to gather and install materials. |
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| Mark
Dion,
who’s known for urban archaeology projects, among other things,
gave students a hands-on experience with cultural artifacts. Instead
of going on a dig, however, he mined the inventory of the Andover
Historical Society, as well as the holdings of private collectors,
in search of miniature objects. Selecting dozens of items from historic
dollhouses, he curated a mock show where they are solemnly displayed
as examples of china, textiles, furniture, metalwork, toys and tools.
In addition, Dion led Andover High School students in taking macro
photographs of the items, styled as if for an auction catalog. The
material culture collections, said in the exhibition guide to “point
out the limitations of categorization and challenge us to look at
these systems with a critical eye” and to “reassess the
multiple layers of meaning that are embedded in these objects,”
remain on view at the Andover Historical Society on Main Street for
the duration of SiteLines. |
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Above, student’s sentiments, as captured by Arthur Ganson’s
Thought-o-Graph, embrace Main Street trees. |
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you ever imagine your thoughts streaming out of your head and into
the open air to become part of nature? Neither did I, but kids from
PA and the local public schools did, thanks to artist Arthur
Ganson’s invention of the Thought-o-Graph. Fabricated
with Ganson, left in above photo, by students at the Greater Lawrence
Technical School, the Thought-o-Graph is a primitive printing wheel,
much like a giant Dymo label machine. With it, students transferred
their inmost thoughts onto white ribbons that now adorn trees along
Main Street. Their words range from love poems (“If you were
[a tear on my cheek], I would never cry for fear of losing you.”)
to social messages (“Being a teenage mom is not a crime.”)
and from joyous proclamations (“I love school!”) to pragmatic
philosophy (“What we call human nature is mostly human habit.”).
The Thought-o-Graph, which also features a student-designed typeface,
was on display in the Addison as part of InSite, and gallery visitors
were invited to stamp out new sentiments to share with the world.
“The artwork,” Ganson explained, “is ultimately their
thoughts.” |
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| Financial
support for SiteLines was provided by the Surdna Foundation, the AT&T
Foundation, the LEF Foundation, the Montauk Foundation, Sam Butler
’72 and Marea Adams, Sueyun Locks, John and Louise MacMillan,
Ellen M. Poss, Dean K. Webster ’47, the Abbot and Dorothy H.
Stevens Foundation and the White Fund. In addition, funding for a
documentary film account of the exhibition project was received from
the Bertha and Isaac Liberman Foundation of New York and from Jerold
Kayden ’71. |
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