Do you have any memories related to Robert Indiana’s Love sculptures? Or Anish Kapoor’s “Bean” in Chicago? What about Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s saffron-colored gates in New York’s central park? How about one of those giant spiders by Louise Bourgeois…or those cows on parade? Did you ever take a picture with one of these or another public art work? Well, I surely have (see me below). Something about the interactive nature of public art, and the feeling that it informally exists in its spot for me, rather than for a gallery space or for someone’s wall, really helps me enjoy public art. And I think regardless of if you like a piece or don’t, it inevitably makes you aware of your space, your participation in it, and someone’s efforts to enrich or change it. As a friend recently reminded me, these works at least make you ask, “Why is this here?”

Saying hello to a Juan Munoz sculpture

The definition of public art differs depending on whom you ask and why you are asking. For example, must the government supply the funding for a project to officially be labeled as public art? Is graffiti public art (see also: Banksy)? Is my neighbor’s daughter’s sidewalk drawing a piece of public art? Is the Love sculpture even public art if it sits on the Museum’s private property? Raquel Laneria sheds some light on this murkiness in her Forbes article “Why We Love – And Need – Public Art.” But whatever the official definition – to me, its an art work in a public space that I can personally access – and I agree with those “nonprofits, federal organizations and private investors who believe it is something indispensable to city life,” and with Darren Walker, who is quoted in the article as having said, “public art is a public good.”

My collage of art, found within a three-block stretch of Washington Street in Indianapolis.

I recently attended the walking tour of George Rickey: An Evolution (I highly recommend it – the last guided tour is August 16) in downtown Indianapolis. Our guide, Mindy Taylor-Ross, prefaced the tour with some Arts Council info and mentioned that Indy was at one time pursuing a ‘percent-for-art ordinance,’ which would provide a more or less stable (though small) funding source for public art in Indianapolis. Many other cities, including Seattle and Chicago, already have similar ordinances. A percent-for-art ordinance states that a percentage of publicly funded capital improvement projects (usually between .5 and 2%) is reserved for the commissioning of public artworks, which generally end up inside the building or on its outlaying property. In my interpretation, this ensures that as long as the city spends money on building projects, public art projects will exists in these spaces. While I’m sure there are a lot of politics and red tape involved in this process, theoretically, this is a good idea. Though with the current government leadership such legislature is likely not a priority, perhaps it could be pursued once more when times are less rough. The Project for Public Spaces website indicates a few other funding sources for public art – public/private sector collaborations, percent and non-percent for art programs, soliciting developer participation, and several other alternatives.

For fun, I polled some friends to find out their favorite and least favorite public art works. Many respondents voluntarily said that the reason they liked it was because they can still vividly see it when they think about it. Pretty cool.

“Loved it”
Eero Saarinen, Gateway Arch (the St. Louis Arch); J. Seward Johnson Jr, The Awakening; Juame Plensa, Crown Fountain; James Yamada, Our Starry Night; Igor Mitoraj, Tindaro Screpolato; the Pineapple Fountain in Charleston, SC; Jim Benedict, Forks, Cheese, Hangers; Magdelena Abakanowicz, Agora.

“Not so much”
Julian Opie, Ann Dancing; Pablo Picasso, Untitled, Chicago. (especially with the baseball caps); Claes Oldenburg and Coosje Van Bruggen, Big Sweep.

What public art works do you like or dislike?

The Awakening

It’s things like this that remind me how lucky I am to work where I do. How many workplaces do you know that have a talent show!? You won’t see this in any of our galleries, at least not anytime soon, but it’s all amazing stuff!

These are all photos I took on my iPhone (hence the shady quality) of artworks brought in to our in-house talent show. The festival took place on Monday, May 18th, 2009. Enjoy…

Heather Hudson - Artwork

Pat Williamson - Paintings & Drawings

Gary Hutchison - Photographs & 2D Art

Jeff Julius - WWII Ships from Recycled Materials

Lindsay Lord - Handbags & Totes

Mary Schnellbacher

Matt Warner - Drawings, Painting & Photographs

Phil Hughes - Paintings & Pewter Miniatures

Joseph Vasquez - Fine Art Prints

John Todd - Ceramics

Carol White - Jewelry & Metalsmithing

Len Bibeau - Painting & Prints

I’ve tried to caption these things as best as I can, but surely I’ve made a mistake or two… please, feel free to chime in and talk about your art if I’ve featured it here (or if I missed you… it was not intentional, I promise!).

I should also mention, there was a performance part to the talent show, but photos won’t do much justice. People performed songs, and performed them amazingly well I must say! Maybe one day we’ll see a clip or two pop up on the internet… if so I’ll add those to the post.

If you were out Sunday afternoon in Indianapolis and happened to see a sculpture flying mid-air across town, don’t worry — you weren’t imagining things.

The sculpture, East Gate/West Gate by Sasson Soffer took flight at around 6 pm and safely landed about ten minutes later. The work is one of four outdoor sculptures the IMA has loaned to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis — otherwise known as IUPUI. Three of the sculptures were relocated earlier in the year, but East Gate/West Gate was too big to transfer via truck. Measuring 24 x 40 x 30 feet, the sculpture could only be moved via helicopter.

The IMA mapped a route along the White River that allowed for the fewest traffic interruptions, and the sculpture made a smooth landing with a welcoming crowd on IUPUI’s campus to greet it.

I bet you wish we had video of that, huh? Well, here it is, straight from the Nugget Factory:

The four IMA sculptures will join newly commissioned works of public art to be located along the Indianapolis Cultural Trail. The trail will connect neighborhoods, entertainment amenities and Indianapolis’s five downtown cultural districts. The western corridor of the trail, to be completed in 2011, will pass through the campus of IUPUI along Blackford Street and will run adjacent to two of the four sculptures from the IMA collection.

Sculptures on loan to IUPUI include:

East Gate/West Gate, 1973
Sasson Soffer (American, b. 1925)
stainless steel
24 x 40 x 30 ft.
82.56

Spaces with Iron, 1972
Will Horwitt (American, 1934 -1985)
cast iron and bronze
54 x 84 x 68 3/4 in.
81.220

Mega-Gem, 1989
John Francis Torreano (American, b. 1941)
heliarch welded aluminum plate, 36 cast aluminum anodized rosettes
7′2″ x 11′ x 7′2″
1997.6

Portrait of History, 1997
Shan Zou Zhou (Chinese, b. 1952)
Bronze
100 x 24 x 30 in.
2001.388

I searched the web for other interesting stories of relocating large pieces, but had a hard time finding anything. If you know of any, please comment about them. And if you have video or imagery — even better!!

We’ve been wanting to write a short note to you all ever since the evening of the IMA’s 125th Anniversary Gala. What a night! A great show of energy and commitment to the museum, a rare chance to spend time with a brand new, permanent work from a major living artist and really just a great party.

Type A piece up for auction at the 125th Gala

But one thing stuck in our heads more than anything else. As we walked in, we saw so many familiar faces at work: first Kim, then Jyl, then Tad, Sarah, Allison, eventually Tammy (on duty with full security gear!)… The list goes on. So many others. We greeted each other, high-fived, maybe chatted a bit. Knowing so many people at the IMA is a privilege and a direct result of the Team Building Project. The kind of familiarity experienced that night, so casual and so comfortable, struck us as a rare and remarkable result of the art-making process. We always hope that in making art, we are exposed to new experiences, ones that we could not have predicted before (and sometimes after) a project begins. This is a personal dividend that we truly value in the work we’re doing together.

Next week we return to Indy to make art together and discuss new ideas for the sculpture. The Team Building Project continues to get deeper, more rewarding and more meaningful. The tangible outcome of the Project, the “residue” we discussed in previous entries, is evolving as a direct response to the encounters we’ve shared. We never planned where this would take us. We have simply been committed to responding as honestly and openly as possible, as artists and as participants in an ever-changing process. We continue to balance commitment to our ideas with responsiveness to the challenges that emerge.

We believe there is a creative arc in the process of making art. It starts with the artist searching for an idea and then shaping what it is to be. At some point, there is a switch; the idea begins to let the artist know what it needs to be and what needs to be done to achieve its ends. Recognizing that tipping point and responding honestly is something that we have always tried to do in our practice. This Project has brought new meaning to that creative arc. It is a privilege working with you all and we look forward to seeing you on November 14th.

Type A

Edible art? Artists use unusual mediums these days, including chocolate. Artist Jean Wertz Zaun specializes in creating chocolate sculptures and paintings that are to be kept and cherished as works of art in their own right. In fact, last August, Zaun was commissioned by the Henry Ford Museum to create a chocolate painting to enhance their showing of Chocolate: The Exhibition. And among others, the Toledo Museum of Art commissioned 37 of Zaun’s works in chocolate to enhance their Van Gogh Fields exhibit in 2003. View a gallery of her museum commissions here.

Other artist have succeeded in this sweet medium including Sid Chidiac who creates edible art, fashion and body painting. Another is Chef Gary Petzl who uses chocolate as both a medium and a working material for sculptures, often creating entire exhibitions. Zaun suggests visiting the Chocolarte Web site to learn more about artists working in chocolate globally.

According to Chocolarte, the concept behind the art is to re-examine our perception of chocolate solely as food and to examine other everyday assumptions. “In using chocolate as an art medium, the viewers are asked to cross the bridge of assumption, of meaning and definition. If this bridge can be crossed then by extension the viewers can rethink the meaning and value of any and all signs in art, in language, in perceptions and in the conclusions they draw. We take chocolate to be a pure and simple pleasure, the dream of a child. We never question this.”

One affordable item that Zaun makes are miniature chocolate paintings delivered in their own gift box. They are white and dark chocolate, food coloring and edible gold, and come in numerous homages like Andy Warhol, Van Gogh, Kahlo and Munch. They sell for $25 each. As for the neighborhood trick-or-treaters…they get her duds!

Photo credit: Munch’s Scream ©2006-08 Jean Zaun

The Wikipedians, Max, and I.

Pictured from right to left are: Max, Aaron (aka The Urbanophile), Jasmine, Christina, and myself.  Not pictured here are Jenny and Joelle.  While I know that Jenny had a scheduling conflict that day, we never did get a response back from Joelle (where’d you go, Joelle?).

Here’s a list of the articles they created:

Christina’s Sutphin Fountain

Jasmine’s Numbers

Aaron’s Mega-Gem

Joelle’s LOVE

Jenny’s SnowPlow

I’ve been watching these articles since they were created and noticed each one has been added to by other Wikipedians – even if just a little.  The article on Robert Indiana’s LOVE sculpture has really taken off.  It’s started to grow into an article about all of Indiana’s LOVE sculptures, not just the one at the IMA, which of course was the first sculptural version that he made.  Wouldn’t it be cool if it became the place for information about that sculpture!

Though I don’t think I’ll be offering lunch with Max anytime soon for making more articles, I do encourage you to make an article about an artwork in the IMA’s collection.  Maybe it’s just because I’m a believer in Wikipedia, but I think it’s important work.  It could be a student project either at the college or high school level – really, anyone can make an article once you get the hang of it.

Because I’m interested in exploring and developing the idea that Wikipedia articles can serve as a place to document public artworks by hosting images, referencing other published information, and allowing the public to have first-hand involvement in the history and preservation of public art, I started working a while ago with a two other conservators Crista and Daniel to make Wikipedia articles about a few public artworks.

Here’s a list of the articles that we created:
In Indianapolis:
Ann Dancing

Depew Memorial Fountain

In Wabash, IN
The Lincoln Monument of Wabash, Indiana

In Washington, D.C.
Always Becoming

While we found that hosting images can be a little tricky (clearing copyright, etc) there’s clearly a lot that can be achieved through this work.  Take for example the Ann Dancing sculpture here in Indy by Julian Opie.  While it was installed in January of this year, it had some display issues and was recently taken down for repairs.  How do I know this?  I found out when someone made an edit to the article.  In a matter of days an image was uploaded and links were made to the local newspaper coverage.

I had never been so interested to see an artwork not working.  It was an example of history being written almost as it happened!

Who knows what will come of all of this but I believe there’s great potential for Wikipedia to help raise awareness about the preservation of artworks through documentation and keeping an up-to-date history – something that print publications simply can’t do.

Anyway, I’m going to tell you how I help to keep our numbers clean and looking good (I get lots of help). For the past few years I’ve invited IMA summer interns working in other departments to help me and the conservation interns wash the “Numbers” (you can go here to Flickr to see a ton of images of our sculptures and Indiana’s various versions of the same sculpture on exhibit around the world).

Washing these 8 foot tall painted aluminum artworks is a fair amount of work, even when you have the good help I had. It’s a fairly straight-forward process to clean the sculptures: we simply wash them gently with soap (I use Orvus ) and water. Really, that’s it, some soap and water, a few ladders and lots of me acting like Mr. Miyagi and demanding perfect motions when doing the work.

Beyond the actual work it’s also a time when I can provide a real example of some of the maintenance we complete on the outdoor sculptures to interns in the other departments. After all (and this number is for Meg), there are over 50 artworks scattered throughout the IMA’s grounds, and soon to be a lot more over in the 100 Acres.

There are two other things that I wanted to mention, one is that you can go here and see a drawing by Robert Indiana that shows what the organization of the numbers meant to him and why we arranged them so. I’m always intrigued by this notion that just by putting two numbers together you can achieve a kind off greater meaning.
The second thing I wanted to mention is the fine Wikipedia article that Jasmine made about the numbers this spring. I have it on good word that invitations for Lunch with the IMA’s director have been sent out to the 5 that made Wikipedia articles of IMA sculptures. I’ve been digging around to see if others have been made, but haven’t found any. Speaking of that, I hope our IT department doesn’t check how many times a day I look at Wikipedia on this computer….

Taking concepts from philanthropy and social activism, entrepreneurship, the Underground Railroad and the music of Naptown, to The Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Nascar, going green, public art, gas prices and a hypothetical mass transit system, artist Chakaia Booker has ignited conversation pieces on Indianapolis’s sidewalks. By cutting, twisting and weaving together rubber tires, Booker has fashioned a temporary urban art exhibition specifically for Indy, removing the road block between the city’s past and present.

Chakaia Booker: Mass Transit is a project of Public Art Indianapolis, which is managed by the Arts Council of Indianapolis. I asked Mindy Taylor Ross, Director of Public Art for the Arts Council, to share her favorite sculpture from the exhibition:

I have three works in the running at the moment – “Gridlock” at the Simon building, “Take Out” on Market Street and “Holler” at iMoca. I believe they are all good examples of the incredible texture and form artists can make with material. You can see Booker’s unique voice in the material. They are also interactive so you can look or move through elements of these pieces.

Pick your favorite work of art in the poll below, and share your connection to it in the comments section of this post. Be sure to visit iMoca to see Chakaia Booker: The Making of a Public Art Exhibition.

Photo credit: “Cross Over Effects” image courtesy of Marlborough Gallery, New York.

Dear Co-Blogger Dude,

And so it begins, writing for IMA blog. Never blogged before, and I’m not quite sure what to write about. I think it comes down to two possibilities: our Team Building project at the Art & Nature Park or music. I’m gonna choose a combination of the two.

Although our tastes in music differ quite a bit, there’s quite a lot of crossover. Shared music includes Clutch, Secret Machines, Radiohead, Dragonforce, Vast, Sugar, Sigur Rus, The Good The Bad and The Queen, and host of others. My most recent purchase is by “Battles.” It might end up on heavy rotation at the studio. (*)

I grew up with classical music as much as you did with rock. While I was being taken to Symphony Hall in Boston you were being taken to hear Zeppelin or the Eagles or the Stones. I think you got the much better deal. In any case, I ended up with a love of classical music that surfaces from time to time, and last week was one of those times. On Friday I took Gaby to hear Emmanuel Ax and the New York Philharmonic perform Beethoven’s Fifth Piano Concerto. It’s a piece that’s moody and masculine, moving through thunderous and aggressive passages into delicate intricacy, and back again. It’s one of my favorite pieces of music and it was the first time I had a chance to hear it live. I was blown away. What I took away wasn’t measurable, wasn’t tangible. In fact the music itself doesn’t really exist except in the performance. The score isn’t the piece, a recording of the piece isn’t the piece either. The piece exists only when a group of people agree to do what it takes to perform it. This got me thinking about a word that came up recently regarding our work: “residue.”

The project we’re doing for the Art & Nature Park involves working with a team of 26 people from a wide variety of departments within the museum. Working within the basic methods of Experiential Education, or Team Building, we’ll play games and solve problems and talk about work and art and taking chances and respect over the course of several meetings in the months to come. In the end we are hoping that the group will be better positioned to successfully open the inaugural show of the park, and we will have collectively shifted the culture of the museum for the better. We were describing this project during a recent studio visit with John Hanhardt and he was trying to understand what tangible artifacts will remain after this project, what the “residue” will be. The fact that there will be not measurable residue seemed to fascinate him and defined the project for him as completely contemporary. Being at that concert last week gave this assessment a completely new meaning.

Lack of residue in art is nothing new. While the traditional parameters of art and criticism emphasize the presence of the object and consequentially the artist’s hand, music is one medium in which these two are not necessarily connected. We would no sooner represent the Team Building project with our notes and documentary photographs than a composer would present a score as the complete work and leave it at that.

What did the audience leave with last week? How did they represent the effect they experienced from the concerto? How did that experience influence them socially, if at all? If culture is defined by ideas and experiences, rather than objects, what is the role of monuments? How does that define the role of the sculpture we are building for the park? The tangible, the intangible, and the role of the artist’s hand — and consequentially the audience’s touch or lack thereof — is where the project rests right now. It’s a lot to think about.

Yeah, so I wrote about our work. Dammit. I thought I’d write about anything but, but… I couldn’t help myself.
Later,

Bordo

(*) REVISION: Since hearing Battles for the first time two days ago, it seems there’s no way in hell this will happen.

Dear Clogger (thought I’d create a hybrid term for us),

Music is the perfect place to start. Experience and preference regarding the medium are not only intensely personal but also largely intangible. You can tell so much about someone by how they regard their music collection. And if they don’t have one…God help them.

When you write of the concert you attended, it is completely understandable. And not in the “I understand what you mean” way but in the “I understand it” way. We’ve always talked about art’s ability to affect an audience as being located in the intensity and focus put into the art and not in the content. That’s why if someone makes art about a grand, sweeping idea like Love, for example, it’s easy to get lost and remain unattached to the potential of that subject matter. Too vague. If someone makes art about a particular idea like love of angora sweaters (as Ed Wood did), then we, the audience, have a much better shot of relating to it. It’s the obsession, the intensity that binds us (whether you like angora or not). So, you saw a performance of a classical piece. To someone who doesn’t like such music or just isn’t familiar with it, that may sound like a snooze. But the emotional response, that’s where that person comes in. When you mention the aggression and the intricacy that was conveyed, I immediately think of the Testament show I caught a few months back. For those not in the know, Testament is an 80s Bay area thrash band. Aggressive and intricate it certainly was. Classical…less. So the content is not as essential as is the passion to convey and connect. And it’s at this point of connection that the idea of residue begins.

Yes, there can be much documentation or proof that something occurred. But residue? That is trickier. With Team Building, we are seeing through a gesture that began with our desire to connect with and affect people. We want people to experience something and have that experience lead somewhere. Where? We don’t know. That’s up to the person doing the experiencing. There doesn’t need to be a physical or tangible manifestation of the experience. In fact, there can’t be. So the residue from the project will be unquantifiable. We know there is the potential for it but cannot, or will not, try to control it. The people involved will hold on to it in whatever way they want. Some may not hold on to anything. If any residue exists, it will seep into people’s minds and, perhaps, into their lives.

We, as artists and performers, will give to the audience. We will get back whatever energy they give and whatever experience they afford. It’s a bit of a dance. The effects of it are sent out to influence in any way that it might. Can culture be affected? Yes. Will it? That’s not the point. Or at least our point. Our goals are to create an experience not determine an outcome unless that outcome is to create a desire to experience more.

Therein lies the connection with music and live performances. We put on a show. The audience comes to see us. We give and get. They give and get. When it’s over, it’s over. Until the next concert.

You can, however, buy a t-shirt on the way out.

AA

One of my favorite pieces in the IMA’s collection is a delicately textured work entitled Duvor, or ‘Communal Cloth,’ by Ghanian born artist El Anatsui. He lives and works in Nigeria as a sculptor and professor.

Duvor is a shimmery, undulating sculpture, made from thousands of collected bottle caps and copper wire, and reminiscent of fabric or chain mail. It hangs in the hallway of the second floor, between the African and Fashion Textile Galleries. Smart move, IMA. This work will stop you in your tracks.

Duvor is captivating, and it makes a strong statement about tradition, trash, beauty and modern Africa. Sustainability is a buzzword now popular in relation to global warming and going green, but not necessarily something I expected to find at IMA. He confronts the social problem of trash by transforming and repurposing it, sustainability at its most beautiful. The patterning is homage to the textiles of Western Africa, including Kente cloth, a woven textile which is known as nwentoma in Ghana.

Anatsui’s sculpture background is evident in the delicate forms created by the rippling and bunching of his ‘fabric,’ something I would guess is not easy to coax out of bits of metal. The installation process with the IMA team shows how he works with the metal until he gets it just right.

As I have thought about this work, fueled by recent readings, I have been thinking about how something like this is classified. Duvor is many things. It is inherently African. It was created in 2007, so it is contemporary. It is also technically a part of the Fashion and Textile collection here at the museum. I know that designating categories is how we find things; we sort by time, place, origin, material, color, size, etc. But I wonder if something like this can ever be all three, equally. Is it just our nature to want a primary category?

Ultimately, where does this object fit in? Who should decide where it goes? Ponder that, and discover some things you might not have already known.

• El Anatsui studied Sculpture and Art Education, and teaches at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

• Ghana and Nigeria are along the West coast of Africa.

• It is 5765 Miles from Indianapolis to Accra, Ghana.

• The word Kente comes from kenten, for basket.

• Kente cloth patterns are associated with stories and proverbs, which give the specific patterns their names.

• Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy cost of processing it new.

• One recycled aluminum can saves enough energy to run a T.V. for 3 hours.