Wheeling Community: Exploring Rochester’s Little Known Public Art by Kitty Jospé

Wheeling Community: Exploring Rochester’s Little Known Public Art by Kitty Jospé

On Sunday, May 3, over 80 people joined Bleu Cease, Executive Director/Curator at RoCo  and Photographer Richard Margolis for a tour of eight hidden treasures of public art.  This tour, in conjunction with the current exhibit, “Ride It:  Art and Bicycles in Rochester” at Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo) celebrated the idea of “slow art” and a chance to notice not only what we often are hurrying by, but to think of larger implications of how we live in our environment.  

It is heart-warming to join with others on a sunny spring day, and discover art and the stories and contexts behind it—and this incredible dividend:  No, not the sounds of trains, or the way sculptures frame fascinating details of buildings, but a sense of feeling connected to others, and connected to our city. Did you know Rochester has had Liberty Poles at the same site since 1830?   What a surprise to arrive on site-specific six-part  Rochester Project, by Richard Fleischner.  It is a magnificent outdoor amphitheatre, looking out on three stone lattices, all the same size but with variations on details of doors, windows through which you can admire the architecture rising up from the Genesee River.  This was commissioned for Rochester’s sesquicentennial (150th) in 1987.

Have you ever paused by Duayne Hatchett’s Equilateral Six in front of the Kenneth B. Keating Federal Building on State Street ?  For those of us gathered in front of it on Sunday, we not only learned about the sculpture, installed in 1975, but also about the 1990’s trend of “plop art”.  One young man remarked on the Dunkin Donuts across the street from it,  inviting comparisons of color, shape, size. Where do we place public art, and how does art change our view of things?  

A highlight of the tour was to welcome Wendell Castle who spoke about his sculpture Twist located between the Sister Cities Pedestrian Bridge and Mortimer Street.  He explained the concept of this giant pretzel-shaped red plastic sculpture as a kit with a vocabulary of joints.  It was a pleasure to have him explain not only how he created the sculpture, but share his opinions about public art and site-specificity.  Richard Margolis had already introduced the concept of longevity regarding public art, saying it does not include murals as they won’t last. Wendell Castle opened up a different angle: considerations of upkeep, and how already the “very 70’s red” had already been re-painted and was due for yet another coat.  The questions and answers reflected a wonderful spirit of community, shared curiosity, and for many, a new awareness about public art.  I was pleased to find out about the “breathing holes” underneath the top arch, placed for practical reasons to regulate humidity, and enjoyed how beautifully the tall arches framed other buildings, echoed some of the window structures.

Another special speaker was Rebecca Fuss, Director of Programing at Central Library, who explained details about the Relief by Ulysses Ricci on the Rundel library and the story behind its funding. The gift from Morton W. Rundel  in 1911, to allow for a new library, due to complications, was not accessed until the depression. The ingenious use of the Genesee River for cooling is an example of ecological and practical thrift. Our Central Library continues to offer an amazing choice of programs and activities and is involved with “May as the Month of the bike”.  For history see: http://www.libraryweb.org/rochimag/architecture/SpecificBuildings/Rundel/Rundel.htm

Sunday’s tour reaffirmed for me a positive feeling about our City. Even if you could not be part of it, it’s not too late to get an idea of the scope. Many of you might recognize the name of Richard Margolis from his large photographs at the Rochester airport, celebrating the quality of life in Rochester.   He has compiled  an extensive list of Public Art in Rochester with photos and descriptions. See:   http://www.rochesterpublicart.com.

It is an amazing list, and already I am ready to explore the sites on the two sites.

Let’s ride, take time to notice what comes alive because we are attentive to it.  As Kurt Vonnegut says, the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.  Public Art is part of such a community.

Sites visited:

1.  “The Liberty Pole”  East Avenue to Main & Franklin Streets.

Dated:  1965.  Designed by architect James Johnson.  Material: Stainless steel

Rochester has had Liberty Poles at the same site since 1830, with as many as ten in various  other locations in the 1840s. They were often hickory or ash poles erected by political  clubs as symbols of strength to celebrate political or military victories. 

Mr. Johnson also designed the Mushroom House in Pittsford.

2.  “Main Street Bridge Railings”   Dated:  1989   by Albert Paley

Material:  Fabricated and forged steel

"Bausch & Lomb Corporation commissioned Albert Paley to provide the Main Street Bridge Railings ‘to make this important artist's work accessible to Rochester residents and city visitors, and to enhance the visual appeal of the refurbished Main Street area.’ “

Mercury can be seen in the distance on top of the Aqueduct Building.

3.  “Twist”   (1972 – 73)  by Wendell Castle 

Material:  Fiberglass; located by Radisson Riverside Hotel Driveway

4.  "Rochester Project"  by Richard Fleischner

Date:  1986   Material:  Enameled Steel

“The Rochester Project was installed as part of the Rochester Sesquicentennial.

  Public art isn't a hero on a horse anymore. For artists uncomfortable with the concept of  

  the artist as a loner making masterpieces from precious materials for wealthy  

  connoisseurs, collaborative projects involving architects, artisans, and contractors,  

   working with the environment represents the attitudes of a new generation. Fleischner 

   uses the specifics of the site, spatial relationships, and perception as components of his 

   work."

5.  “Equilateral Six”  by Duayne Hatchett 

       Dated:  1975.  Material:  Painted fabricated aluminum

    "Six equal planes formed and positioned in space change relationships according to the 

     observers movement, just as each person's experience in life mirrors their individual 

      perceptions." 

6.  “Trust and Security” Times Square Building (on Exchange Street); The Gannett Building has more bas-relief sculptures.   Dated:  1939   by Jesse Corbin   -  3:00         Material:  Carved Stone

The building is 260 feet tall, completed in 1930, In addition to the relief sculptures, "Wings of Progress" is located on top of the building.  The winged Times Square Building is a dramatic example of Art Deco architecture and a  

monument to progress. It has been a major city landmark since the Genesee Valley Trust 

Company completed its construction in 1930. The cornerstone of the building, ironically, 

was laid on October 29, 1929, the day the stock market crashed.

7.  “Rundell Library Relief”   

 Dated:  1936   Material:  Carved Stone

 The façade of the Rundel Memorial Library features Art Deco details and bas-relief 

 sculptures, by Ulysses Ricci of New York City, 1936. The man and woman touching the child between them synbolizes the continuity of life. The man holds a scroll and book 

symbolizing philosophy and biography. The woman carries a sword and two tablets of law symbolizing history and religion. The rays of light and festoons represent light and glory.

8.  “Genesee Passage”  by Albert Paley.   At  front of Bausch & Lomb

 Dated:  1996 

 "Genesee Passage is Albert Paley's largest sculpture to date. It is composed of abstract forms symbolizing the growth of Bausch & Lomb as a major international corporation along the banks of the Genesee River."

The Beauty of Gray: Scapes exhibit showcases video art that's not all black and white

The Beauty of Gray: Scapes exhibit showcases video art that's not all black and white
by Geoff Graser

If you don’t “get it” right away, Debora and Jason Bernagozzi understand. When the couple tells people they do video art, most people say, “Oh, you do commercials.” Nope. “Oh, you do those weird foreign movies.” Not exactly. The Bernagozzis’ art form is more like abstract art—abstract art that moves and talks and sometimes chirps.

The Bernagozzis’ work is part of RoCo’s “Scapes” exhibit on display until Sunday, November 13. On my first try, I didn’t exactly “get it.” And that’s all right, Jason says, that’s partly his point. He thinks Americans are spoon fed so many messages through the media and popular art that people believe what others want them to believe rather than making up their own minds. This echoes some of the work of Nam June Paik, considered the father of video art for his innovations in the 1960s. Paik would take footage of the Beatles and manipulate the waves so the Fab Four would disintegrate. He did this with politicians and other TV celebrities, hoping to convince viewers that the people on TV weren’t indestructible gods.

So you’re not alone if you stare in wonderment as a giant projection of Jason’s lips (bigger than Mick Jagger’s entire body) appears on the wall and then transforms into a colorful roaming grid that morphs into shapes resembling a double helix then a seismograph then rolling meadows and then waterfalls. Jason’s piece “Form: Data: Form” reflects that life is not a linear “I get it” experience. Just when you think you’ve got everything under control, your company is bought out and you have two weeks to find another job, or your fiancé leaves you for your best friend, or the Buffalo Bills’ fast start was an early-season tease. Life is unpredictable, confusing, and subjective. And the Bernagozzis’ art happily reminds us of this.

Bleu Cease, RoCo’s executive director, discovered Jason’s video art online while looking for work that would fit a theme connecting the landscape with the human body. He saw Jason’s “Data Speak” project first. This project displays four talking heads on monitors set on four platforms facing each other as if they were in conversation. The faces are approximately life-sized and a viewer naturally stands in the middle to get a good look, but it’s hard to see all four faces at once. If feeling like you’re chasing your tail is not discomfiting enough, wait until one of these friendly-enough faces tries to talk. Thanks to a technique Jason and a fellow video artist discovered called compression pixel displacement or “datamoshing,” when a person talks his or her face decomposes into easily the most disturbing video I’ve encountered since the Pamela and Tommy Lee home movie. The color in their faces dissolves into a splotchy electronic mess that captures the often imposing barriers of language and social interaction.

Take, for instance, the story of how the Bernagozzis met. Jason approached Debora at a Goth Night at an Ithaca club called The Haunt, where she liked to dance because it wasn’t a meat market. “I blew him off,” she said and laughed. But he did get her number. And soon, he found out that she took the photos for the guidebook to “Vampire: The Masquerade,” a role-playing game he vamped out to in high school. “Goth teen,” Jason said and shrugged a little sheepishly, “what are you going to do?” And over the next several months, their common interest in experimental art—Jason in music and Debora in video—proved the start of something a lot deeper.

Jason already enjoyed the technical aspects of sound production but he soon began spending time with Debora at the Experimental Television Center in the small Southern Tier town of Owego, New York. On the third floor of an historic building next to the Susquehanna River, this cozy haven provided artists with cutting-edge equipment to use during short-term residencies. “You worked, and cooked, and slept there,” Debora said wistfully about the center that has recently closed. Jason decided to get serious and started going to college for video, culminating last year in an MFA from Alfred University, a program Debora had graduated from eight years earlier.

At Alfred, one of Jason’s classmates was Jamie Hahn. Hahn’s video “My Horizon” (along with its companion stills) is the first exhibit you see when entering RoCo. It’s dreamy, black and white footage of a hillside appears to have been shot by the wind, gently blowing over blades of grass. However, Hahn captured this scene in the unsettling moments before an oncoming storm and slowed it down in the editing process.

A painter and photographer first, Hahn’s subject has always been the landscape, and her mesmerizing piece alludes to one of the ways her lifestyle, perspective, and art changed when she moved to Upstate New York. The Indiana native who once thought she might spend her entire life on the plains of the Midwest was so taken by the landscape during her first visit to the region that she moved to Alfred before receiving official acceptance to the program. Once here, she spent a lot of her free time driving and getting “lost” in the rural areas without a map, happy to soak in her surroundings by using natural landmarks to find her way back. “My Horizon” replicates a journey in which the internal landscape is just as important as the external landscape. “There is no sound purposely,” she said. “When you look at this I hope you become more aware of your own breathing, of your heartbeat.”

While Hahn moved to Washington for a teaching job after graduation, the Bernagozzis have moved to Rochester and are now firmly entrenched in a region where video art has flourished for several decades. Surprisingly, the form’s success in Upstate New York has nothing to do with Kodak, but instead the progressive programs at the University of Buffalo and Syracuse University as well as the Experimental Television Center in Owego.

Jason and Debora are well-versed in the history of their art form’s predecessors and talk excitedly about how they create their work. Debora’s piece “Stream” employs nine monitors in a semi-circle showing continuous loops of video footage she took of branches in a stream. “At first, it was just me walking in the stream, trying not to drop the camera.” Then she used an instrument to split the image into four copies of the same video but played at different speeds. The speeds are then finely tuned with oscillators. The rolling black and white images end up with a bit of a “Blair Witch Project” feel as you stand in the enclosed back section of RoCo, and it might be enough to creep you out if not for another effect Debora manipulated. She couldn’t stand the natural sound of the cars rumbling by on the nearby street, so she deleted it and liked what she heard when she split the images. It’s reminiscent of crickets chirping.

In the case of the morphing topographical grid in Jason’s “Form: Data: Form,” he said it took eight months to master how he could map the video signal from a Web cam into a customized video processing system that interprets his body movements in relationship to light, perspective and rhythm. “It’s not like I’m the wizard and you can’t see what’s behind the curtain,” Jason said in regard to his eagerness to talk about his techniques and process.

Sterz, on the other hand, is a Rochester artist who preferred to let the subjects of his two pieces on display remain a mystery. In “Red,” a round globule slogs across an aluminum screen like a single-cell organism under the microscope. “If I tell people what it is,” Sterz said. “then that’s all they will see.”

In other words, you’re not expected to “get it.”

Flight of the Iconoclast by Timothy O'Malley

Today we see the Corporation, through the eyes of the law, as an individual—groups  of boardroom office-junkies functioning as primary organs in the artificial life of their citizen-company. They feed it cash and raw materials, develop its protocols, and pour over battle plans for its unlikely survival in the largest and most influential warzone ever created in the history of humankind: the Open Market. If our company grows, the highschool lunchroom is abuzz with desire to devour frozen pizza and mozzarella sticks at the table of champions. However, popularity is unforgiving: there is nowhere to go but down. Our citizen-corporation has not equipped itself to handle banishment from the popular crowd—and the fear is palpable; for if there is even a whisper of decline, a mere suggestion of a curved margin, the ugly wind of abandon blows fierce. Climates of insti-spooked mass-exodus inspire a posture of market grabbing risk diversification, oft-justifying near criminal schemes to preemptively divert a comprehensive, inevitable collapse. Business is business, after all.

Enter "creativity" and "innovation". An age old remnant of the R&D division, these two abstract notions run amuck in the memos of companies who are beginning to overtly reinvest in (someone's) creative capacity to consistently pique growth. At a time of great environmental and economic issue, the landscape of our mandatory, systemic, perpetual growth welcomes the inclusion of this functional re-brand to combat an ever-escalating consumer demand for newness. Yet while recognition of the general value-added by such creative individuals to reveal new methods and products is on the face of it positive, after two weeks of wearing our pajamas to work and a down-payment on that new townhome, those pesky little intuitions start creeping back up the spine... Is this the best use of
our creative talent? Are there no other options for the right-brained?

Richard Florida (author, Flight of the Creative Class, 2007) has been hailing the money-making value of the "creative" in modern business. As a consultant for some of the largest companies the world over, he has helped to raise the position on 'creative capital' to a no-brainer. How could creative people not help businesses think of innovative avenues unexplored? As Florida constructs this new category, it is difficult to ignore the irony of his effectively securing for himself the very same position he's invented. As an author, lecturer, and professor of ideas, the man has become Creative Class citizen number one. Perhaps the (profound) collateral damage of this mind-shift in thinking about artists may have caught our attention, had we forgotten not to care. College tuitions rise and dwindling enclaves for artists' survival thin evermore; the 'creative' individual in our society becomes re-branded right under our noses. As the market-beast begins to wield significant dictation over our cultural producers, we are offered to dodge a double edged sword. As it swings, artists are forced to submit to careers in big business, creating super-spindoctors rather than exposing them. As it swings, a shivering certainty that should they be removed from this new creative MO, hardship for the ro-nin artist will become even greater. The pressures of money-flow homogenization wave to us like red flags of surrender, taunting us to reprove the value of the artist in society. At this late stage, it is alarmingly clear that support for artists who serve no master is imperative if we value the clarity of perspective that they bring to us in the face of globalizing conformity.

What shall become of a society which can find no use for citizens patrolling its boundaries, looking in?

Timothy O'Malley is a career wanderer, artist, writer, and lover of cyclical sociology. He has found home in Philadelphia, Belize, Rochester, and soon to be Portland, OR. He can be reached with any comments at tim@timomalleydesign.com.

Animal Passions: The Drawings of Julianna Furlong Williams by Illa Loeb

Standing in front of Julianna’s animal drawings, you know you are not in The Peaceable Kingdom (Edward Hicks, 1780-1849). The child-like subject matter obscures the profundity that the surface and the construction of the drawings convey. Two paintings in particular – Red Dog (2009) and Dog & Berries (2009)– depict the intense emotional components of art making.

In Red Dog, white paint ovals, encasing beautifully painted stripes, no two the same, surround a loopy dog who, snapping his jaws, has somehow managed to catch one in his mouth. The circle of white paint around the stripes places these fireflies on the surface of the paper. The subtlest variation in the use of the material – a set of stripes surrounded by the white of the paper itself – locates one firefly inside the dog’s stomach.

During her gallery talk, Julianna mentioned loving color so much she wanted to eat it.  This dog has successfully ingested the embodiment of color itself.  Shown red against a black background, he is, to be sure, a devilish looking character; but, more to the point, having ingested light, he glows from within with his passion for color. Unlike a William Wegman Weimaraner, this dog is not anthropomorphized: he catches the firefly with his mouth, not his paws.  He demonstrates the wild, animal nature of an artist’s passion for color.

Whereas Red Dog is light-hearted, Dog & Berries is an Aesop’s fable for horror fans. A dog wolfishly devours berries, clusters of which hang tantalizingly around the picture field. Look closely, and you will see that the air is splattered with delicately painted dots so red they look like fresh blood.  These are more than berries; and, this is the satiety of more than physical hunger.  This is the fulfillment of a powerful desire. Humor and fierce voracity hold each other in balance.

Dog & Berries is divided into a dark and a light section. Conventionally, a horizontal line across divides earth from sky. As with the work of Barnett Newman, Brice Marden, and Terry Winters, among others, the division signifies a relationship which is abstract. While this drawing is ostensibly representational, the use of the division suggests a relationship between its parts that is both opposite – black versus white – and complementary – the larger light area rests upon the dark area. Julianna’s adeptly adopted format both relates and distinguishes the state of wanting and waiting from that of getting.

Volcano on Rabbit (2010), also in the show, has a strong bearing on how Julianna has constructed meaning in Dog & Berries. In this drawing of a pink rabbit with geyser ears, the background is more solid than the rabbit and seems to hold the rabbit in place. In Dog & Berries, Julianna paints a black field around the negative shapes of two dogs surrounded by dark, shadowy clusters of fruit. While the rabbit looks to be trapped in its space, multiple renderings of a dog’s shape in lighter colors within those negative spaces create the image of a creature that is wriggling.

Volcano Rabbit also came up during Julianna’s artist talk. Once she had this idea of the ears, she thought of them the whole night and could not wait to put them on paper.  Just so, the dark segment of Dog & Berries implies the dog’s obsession with the elusive fruit. The light space shows those grapes in all their ripe reality; within that space Julianna has painted a slightly darker rectangular ground where the dog stands firmly and wolfs down his prize. Whether the dark area is literally the night or just that untamed place where ideas form, waiting is hard. The realization of an idea is serious business, the equivalent of fulfilling a powerful hunger.  As one can see from Julianna’s surfaces, she chews her ideas fiercely and uses her materials passionately.

As a mentor, Julianna not only taught her students to paint but also how to have an idea and to use materials to convey it. When she says that she does not know how these drawings came about, this must be modesty. Her shrewd use of bare paper which serves to not only situate the firefly but to also create the dog’s negative shapes means that the ideas were embedded in these drawings from their beginnings. Perhaps even at this stage in her career, she is awed by the gift that makes these drawings seem so completely spontaneous. As a maker, she practices what she preaches; and she is the mistress of her own technique.
- Illa Loeb

http://www.rochestercontemporary.org/photogallery_williams.asp

Makers & Mentors
February 5 - March 21, 2010
Rochester Contemporary Art Center
New Sculpture, Painting and Drawing by influential artists/ educators Judd Lawrence Williams and Julianna Furlong Williams and their former students, Elaine Defibaugh and Illa Loeb. Co-Curated by Nancy Kelly and Bleu Cease.