So... when is Lent over? My fingers are getting tired...
And now, for today's blogue, let me talk very briefly (ten minutes to midnight, and counting...) about my adventure at the library.
Well, of course, it started last October, after the infamous ice storm that downed trees and power lines. After I had cleared out the sycamore limbs in the driveway, and the electricity had been turned on, seven days after the event itself, we still didn't have reliable cable service. Well, I don't care about the phone that much, and didn't really miss sitting in front of the TV, lip-synching to old episodes of Law and Order. What drove me crazy was not having access to email and Facebook (or, as I've begun to think of it, Wastebook); luckily the South Orange Public Library was making their facility available to all residents. They put out extra power strips, there were plenty of spaces to sit, and I wasn't tempted to get up and spend $15 on a cup of coffee every half hour.
So, I became something of a fixture at the library for that three weeks. And when cable service was finally fixed at our house, I stopped back to thank the library folks, and asked if there was something that I could do, to make my gratitude a bit more concrete. When I mentioned that I'm an active artist, one of the ladies at the front desk pointed to a brochure on their lecture series, meeting on Thursday afternoons, and she wondered if I'd be interested in giving a talk. She suggested that, as I would be the first sculptor ever to speak at this series, my topic should be 'Sculpture'. That seemed a bit broad, for an hour. 'How about Modern Sculpture?' she suggested. Done. I picked a date in March (certain that I'd be dead before then), and went on my way.
Well, as we all know, I've managed to survive, and when this week actually began, it dawned on me that -- gasp -- I had a Power Point presentation to assemble, and only a couple of days to do it. Plus, I was determined to take some of my work with me too. It just seemed too ironic, given the topic of the talk, to restrict myself to two-dimensional pictures of three-dimensional work. And given my predilection for making work that looks big, but weighs very little, the actual physical exertion would, I thought, be minimal.
The Power Point process, as you all probably know, was such a cinch, it was almost embarrassing. I just zoomed through a Google search of artists whose names occurred to me, as personal favorites, or as artists whose work impacted some of my own choices as an artist. Of course, I couldn't include everyone I like -- one hour, remember. But I did manage to feature works by fifteen artists, plus four or five slides of my own work. Not too bad, I thought.
The actual work was a bit more of a challenge. I still need to do more work on the support for the hanging piece I wanted to show, so I had to use a substitute. And that substitute has a balance problem, because I wasn't thinking when I built it. I came up with what I thought was a brilliant solution -- I would quickly add a wire-mesh shelf, and put a counter-weight at the back of the support, so the figure could be suspended away from its vertical support, and the whole thing would still stay upright. Some wire, some mesh, some shears, a few minutes in the driveway, what's not to love?
The counterweight, as it happens, is an old refrigerator vegetable crisper bin, with some random junk inside -- I found it in the Newark space, and tossed it in the van. Meant to be.
I was so thrilled, when I got to the library parking lot, that there was a traffic cone in a space right outside the front door, marked 'Reserved for Speaker'. Which would be me! I haven't felt this important in a long time. An actual reserved parking space? In Philadelphia, as a full-time college professor, I had to resort to parking in the lot of an Asian food market, at least a mile from campus, and dragging my sorry butt, and all my stuff, up through the side streets, interrupting who knows how many drug deals on my way to teach a glass blowing class. Today, in South Orange, I'm like royalty.
Set-up went smoothly -- there was a young woman on hand, to help me with the computer technicalities of using my little zip drive with their system. Phyllis, the lecture program coordinator, offered to make copies of a list I wanted to hand out, of the artists whose work I would be showing, and their dates. So all I had to do was wrestle my artwork into the building, through three sets of double doors. While I was putting the figure on the upright support, the counterweight bin fell off, and spilled all over the carpet. No major damage -- just a little extra vacuum attention. I put everything back, and turned my attention to worrying about what on earth I was going to say.
But as it turned out, I needn't have worried, on that score at least. I began, improbably enough, with a slide of the tomb of Pope Julius II, by Michelangelo, to set a kind of perspective on what sculpture had been for centuries, and to act as a point of reference for the modern work. I was surprised how well that worked. When we skipped ahead some 400 years, to look at a reclining figure, in white marble, by Henry Moore, the connection was obvious. The leap to Brancusi was a bit more difficult, but talking about 'Bird in Space' provided enough anecdotal diversion to cover the difference in subject matter. Luckily, I also included one of Brancusi's simple marble heads, which brought us back to a figurative frame of mind.
And so it went. Here's the list of artists I showed: Michelangelo; Henry Moore; Brancusi; Giacometti; Duchamp (the urinal was a big hit); Calder; Louise Nevelson; Lee Bontecou; Tony and Kiki Smith; John Chamberlain; Duane Hanson; Eva Hesse; Louise Bourgeois; and Ron Mueck. I was especially glad that I'd chosen so many women artists, because there was only one man in the audience, and it seemed appropriate to talk about different ways of working with a broader range of materials, rather than sticking with industrial steel, or marble. Even though I thought I had too many slides for the time frame, we were able to spend a bit more time with the first image for each artist, and then move more quickly through the rest. I finished, somewhat cheekily I guess, with some images of my own work, and I hope it wasn't too much of a stretch, to try to find similarities between what I do, and what these iconic artists have accomplished. Oh well.
So. Done. There was time for some questions, and right away someone asked why I hadn't included George Segal. Sigh. Forty-five minutes. And really, between you and me, I didn't short-change the figurative at all -- and even the more abstract works were clearly associated with the human form, in one way or another. Even Tony Smith's work came across as oddly gestural and rooted in the body.
Then, an attractively-dressed woman introduced herself as a member of the board of the Milburn Library, and wondered if I'd be interested in coming to speak there! How funny! So of course I gave her my contact information, and felt quite flattered.
And then, the wire shelf with the counterweight on it collapsed, spilling those same rusted oddments all over the floor again. And because the wire had snapped, I had to make an adjustment in how the hanging figure was attached. No one seemed to mind. Sometimes I think I should always wear a red rubber nose and a big ruffled collar when I speak in public. After everyone left (Phyllis also asked if I'd be interested in coming back again), I loaded everything back into the van again -- more circus imagery, come to think of it -- and drove home. Where I promptly fell into a kind of stupor that lasted most of the rest of the day. I think I fell asleep in front of the TV, this time while a truly dreadful movie, 'Die, Monster, Die', starring Boris Karloff and Nick Adams (!?!?!) was showing on TCM. I'll surely have interesting dreams tonight.
So it's not all woe, all the time here. Sometimes, things work out just fine. Thought you'd like to know.
© 2012 Walter Zimmerman
No comments:
Post a Comment