dayton is not in ohio

I did a fairly quick proposal this week that I thought I’d share. The venue is Experimental Station, a “small business incubator” and event venue, non-profit, and it’s done in conjunction with an art/design collaborative called Material Exchange that’s really into, well, exchanging materials — sustainability, recycling and stuff like that. They received a large amount of Astroturf from a Martin Kippenberger installation at the Renaissance Society, and have put out a call to design putt-putt holes as part of a nine hole installation at their space on the south side of Chicago. Golf. Art. Proposals. Sounded right down my alley so here’s my shot at it. By the way, the super awesome proposal images are what I made after the first meeting of my new 3-D design class. I just made one model and rotated it for all of the images. I’m pretty pumped about this class. I thought it would take me all semester before I’d start being able to use this stuff to make proposals, which is why I took the class…

I don’t want to post the whole proposal, but the gist is a putt-putt hole that consists of a ramp leading up to a thin raised putting surface with 18 holes - the number of holes on a standard golf course - that spell “hole in 1” in Grade 1 Braille. Each of these holes connects to a long central conduit beneath the putting surface that carries the ball the length of the hole and drops it with a resonant “plink” into a tin cup. Special flashing LED lighted balls, popular for sneaking onto fancy golf courses to play at night (not that I would know personally, Scott… well, maybe just once…) are provided to play the hole.

As I mentioned in my original post, the most interesting narratives to be explored at Cermak Plaza revolve around the objects that no longer exist. Of the two artifacts that I’m most interested in, Nancy Rubins’ “Big Bill-Bored” is the sculpture that kindled the most passionate public debate. It’s interesting that the commissioning of large public sculptures really began in the late 1950’s as a way of revitalizing America’s urban centers in the wake of the suburbanization of the late ’40s and early 50’s. It was this flight toward the suburbs that gave birth to shopping centers and, subsequently, where David Bermant made his mark. Then he went and started putting sculpture in his shopping centers. It seems that all but the most innocuous sculptures created a stir.

Installed in 1980, Rubins’ sculpture was the first one placed at Cermak Plaza. It looks like a giant inverted porkchop made from concrete, small appliances and other consumer goods. I think it’s significant to the concept that it looks like a piece of food. Rubins makes a nice statement about suburban consumption, but she makes it really big and right in the face of the suburbanites. Obviously, this is going to put a burr up the rear of people that are trying to create a safe, consumeristic enclave where conspicuous consumption is the rule.

So, David Bermant has a community referendum and also hires the Gallup organization to do a poll in Berwyn on whether the sculpture will stay or go. This, apparently, really ticks off Nancy Rubins who says that the scupture can only be destroyed if it is removed. This may seem obvious given the logistics of moving a 100-ton chunk of sculpture, but when you’re David Bermant and you just payed $25,000 dollars for the thing, you might want to keep it. This is probably why, after the poll came narrowly in favor of removal, David Bermant decided that the results were incomplete and elected not to remove Big Bill-Bored. Yeah, I hear Gallup runs a pretty crummy poll. Here’s a Chicago Tribune article, and another in the Berwyn community newspaper.

This did not change, however, the falling out between Mr. Bermant and Ms. Rubins. Here’s what David Bermant had to say about the work and their relationship: Click here to listen. Hilarious. There are not many people in the world he doesn’t like. But she’s one of them, and he’s not afraid to broadcast it.

The sculpture was removed in 1993. Apparently, the public eventually became apathetic toward the sculpture, but were more than glad to see it removed when it was no longer deemed structurally sound. If it was like any other Rubins’ sculpture I’m sure it never appeared structurally sound. I bet some city councilman seeking re-election told folks he’d tear it down if they voted for him, then had his cousin the engineer say that it was unsafe. Case closed.

Big Bill-Bored was replaced by Tempus Fugit in 1994. Created by Kristen Jones and Andrew Ginzel, Tempus Fugit was an interesting and useful rotating “town clock.” I actually kinda like this very straightforward, elegant piece.

I have no idea how long Tempus Fugit was installed before being replaced by the kitschy monstrosity that is The Helicopter by Steve Gerberich. I think that all of the citizens of Berwyn should be heavily taxed to pay for a replacement sculpture as punishment for not creating a public outcry about this piece of crap. Whether one likes the Nancy Rubins sculpture or not, I find it funny that if you take make something sophisticated and thought-provoking that looks like a piece of crap people hate it, but if you make an actual piece of crap that looks like a helicopter, people love it.

Cermak Plaza part III will be on the most interesting tragedy of all: Floating McDonalds. Stay tuned…

Justin Kay is an artist friend in Philadelphia and one of the charter members of the Church Studios. Karen and I, just yesterday, got around to watching Philadelphia based filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan’s Lady in the Water. It was not very good, confirming most of the reviews, but the special features made the film for us when Justin showed up in the audition reel… puking. It appears that he was auditioning for the pivotal part of a drunken reveler whose ill-timed regurgitation distracts the guys who are supposed to be guarding the narf protagonist, and she gets dragged off by a magical foliage-coated rogue hyena. And the Oscar goes to… Justin Kay:

Small window (small file)

Large window (large file)

As much as I hate to admit that anything Microsoft has to offer is better than the same thing offered by anyone else, I have to admit it. The new satelite maps from Microsoft are awesome. They are a lot sharper, offer more viewing options and some are newer as well. When I saw this I bee-lined it right for Eastern State Penitentiary.

This is a much sharper image than offered by Google, and not even zoomed all the way. My purpose, of course, is to try to see my pipes going over the wall. There is nothing indisputable, but I think that the red glow might be them. The only photo that I enhanced dramatically is the super close-up. In this case I only increased the contrast and lowered the brightness.

What does the viewing public think?

If you are one of the blog visitors that hates my sports posts, you might want to read this one, because it’s not about sports. Well, it is, and it isn’t. I’m aware just now that I sound a lot like the sportswriters who write the occasional introspective piece as an attempt to assert that they do actually care about something other than sports.

Today at 8pm Eastern time, the Philadelphia Eagles will play the New Orleans Saints in the NFL playoffs. The winner goes on to the NFC championship game to play for a trip to Superbowl XLI. The loser goes on vacation. For Philadelphia, it is a chance to end it’s quarter-century championship drought, and break the curse of Billy Penn. I won’t for a second, however, compare this to New Orleans’ situation, where the success of the historically impotent Saints has come to capture the spirit and symbolize the rebirth of a city literally rising from the ruins of hurricane Katrina. The Superdome, which became the principle symbol of the anarchy and hellish reality of a destroyed city, has become the unifying arena of a community’s rebirth. I’ve never approached a sports event with more personal melancholy than this particular contest. This game, for me as a sports fan, is like being asked to choose between loving my mother or loving my wife.

I was born in New Orleans. The house I grew up in was under water for a week. I love the city of my birth, and when its heart is breaking my heart aches as well. I didn’t choose the Big Easy, just like I didn’t choose my mom, but there is a love between a mother and her child that can’t be broken. In spite of the fact that, in terms of football, the city gave me no love for 31 years, I retain a loyalty to the Saints. In a sense, now more than ever, the city needs the Saints to win. It reminds me of a sermon illustration that my dad once used (I think…) about a sick person that was given hope for recovery by a vine growing on a fence visible from their sickbed. After recovering, the person paid a visit to the vine, only to discover that even after the real vine had died over the winter, a loved one had painted the vine on the fence to give them hope. I’m afraid, in a sense, for a city that has placed it’s heart and its hope in the success of a football team, because there’s no pretending that you won the Superbowl.

Then there’s Philadelphia, the city that I chose. I chose to become an Eagles fan. Philadelphia is where my daughter was born, and where I came of age as an artist. The Eagles have been good to me. I greatly admire the spirit of Philadelphia, and the spirit of Philadelphia’s fans. They demand performance, and they will let you know if you are not performing to their expectations. But if the team fails, they’ll faithfully come back next year to give it another go. There are no “friendly confines” in Philly like you’ll find at Wrigley field, here in Chicago. I was almost offended at the indifference I was greeted with when I showed up at Wrigley to see the Phillies in a Philadelphia jersey. Philadelphia has a blue-collar spunk and intensity that is infectious, even if you’re not a blue-collar guy. Vince Papale’s dad has a line in the movie Invincible where he says of a past success of the Eagles: “That touchdown got me through thirty years at the factory.”

I think these types of hopes are ultimately misplaced, don’t get me wrong, but a sense of hope is a sense of hope and I hate to see one of these teams lose. In a sense, the loser gets the gift of reality. They are forced to come to grip with the reality that it’s just a football game. I guess I wish they could both win this one.

But one has to lose, and I have to choose who to cheer for. So, I’m choosing the one that I chose. It is just a game, after all…

FLY EAGLES FLY!!!

How can I introduce Cermak Plaza? It’s wonderful and tragic. It’s a mile from my house. It’s a depressing strip mall. It’s like finding a treasure map…

It begins when a man named David Bermant makes a fortune developing strip shopping centers in the U.S. after WWII. As a collector and lover of art he starts to commission the creation of sculptures for his shopping centers along the East Coast and California. He spends hundreds of thousands of dollars of his own money placing artworks, many of which the public hates, in his shopping centers. The list of the museums that own work by the artists represented in his strip malls are not what you’d probably expect from artists whose works share space with beauty salons, Hispanic grocery markets and Walgreen’s — museums like MoMA, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery, every MOCA under the sun… not to mention international museums like the Tate, or the Centre Pompidou. And now most of the best are gone, destroyed by the elements or by public opinion. What remains is the decaying graveyard of a fairly bold experiment in public art. Far more interesting than most of the remaining sculptures, are the missing sculptures.

I discovered Cermak Plaza in roughly the same way most people do: I was shopping at Circuit City and I noticed, way out in the middle of the parking lot, a fifty-foot shish kebab of outdated cars. On closer inspection I found an old, deteriorated plaque:

Spindle
by Dustin Shuler, 1989

The automobile, the computer, and the television are the three technological wonders of the Twentieth Century that have most profoundly influenced our culture.

Artist Dustin Shuler, with his finger on the pulse of the Twentieth Century, has chosen the automobile as the subject matter of his art.

Spindle lifts the auto out of its ordinary place, and by relocating it as we’ve never seen before causes us to look again — to question its priority and importance in our daily living. Is it an object for veneration? If so, should it be?

Dustin Shuler was born in 1948 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and now lives and works in the Los Angeles area. He has auto works in the de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara, California; the Department of Motor Vehicles of the State of California in San Jose; and at the San Francisco Parking Authority in San Francisco, California.

The last time I had seen an odd public object that had a similar text — title, artist, statement, bio — it was in Salzburg, Austria when I saw Paola Pivi’s A Helicopter Upside Downin a Public Place. My students were perplexed by it. I said that it was probably art. It was the sign that set the record straight.

All I knew at this point was that whoever put this spire in Cermak Plaza thought of it as a work of art, not simply just some attention grabbing parking lot gimmick. This made me wonder if there was more. What I discovered was that there was much more, and soon it was as if I were exploring a mysterious abandoned civilization that only I could see. Welcome to Cermak Plaza.

It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say “The social utility of the indeterminate sentence is recognized by all criminologists as a part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,” you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull. But if you begin “I wish Jones to go to jail and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,” you will discover, with a thrill of horror, that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word “damn” than in the word “degeneration.”