Storm King Morning

 Storm King is acres of meadows,woods, treed alleys, ponds and SCULPTURE. The land has been groomed to provide excellent vistas of tons (literally) of monumental sculpture. Mown trails guide you through the meadows where wildflowers and butterflies abound. 

Sculpture is meant to be seen from all sides and I enjoy being surprised by the way each piece changes as I approach it. One sculpture, appeared as a tight ball from one side, but expanded into a long series of interlocking shapes as we drew near.

Other favorites were the mirrored fence by Alyson Shotz, the orange zigzag  by Alexander Lieberman, Andy Goldsworthy’s serpentine wall, Maya Lin’s waves of grass, and the field of Mark de Suvero sculptures.  It’s impossible to see it all in a few hours, but you have a better chance

 if you rent a bike to get around and pack a picnic.  We only had a few hours, but you could easily spend a whole day here.  I feel like we saw so much but when I look at their website, I see how much we missed. We’ll be back.

Walking Arlington - part 2 "Magical Moments"

A walk is exercise.  It is informational, historical, territorial, but sometimes everything converges and it's magical. These have been some lovely moments on our walks:

• A sloping wooded neighborhood street, where each resident had not only decorated their house and yard with lights, but had coordinated to hang strings of lights crisscrossing the street all the way up the hill.
• A giant pine tree hung with at least 25 handmade birdhouses, most made from re-purposed materials.  The yard alive with birdsong as birds stood on their homes or sang from inside their crafty digs.
• Tree stumps carved into Roosters, stacked balls, waterfalls, benches, and bears, to name a few.
  
• A walkway lined with colorful bowling balls.
• A more permanent game of hopscotch made from stepping stones.
• A house covered in ceramic faces.
• A corrugated whale hung on a garage door.
• Many fairy houses and gnomes, in yards, on tree stumps, and sometimes even appearing along a bike path.
• A giant property strung up with over the top Christmas lights.
•  Enormous inflatable Mushrooms lit up in the dark.
• Painted "eyes" staring up from the sidewalk.
• Rosie who sniffs and licks every statue of a dog.
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Walking Arlington (part 1) Where the Sidewalk Ends

 In three weeks, Bill and I walked one hundred miles.  We hadn't gone very far, and we'd retraced our path many times, but we covered a lot of ground.

Our quarantine hobby is to walk all of the residential streets in Arlington County; we are more than halfway towards our goal.  Before the quarantine, date night would mean going out to see a movie or a concert and eating out.  Now we walk our dog

We walk our dog every day, but with the quarantine, this duty which was usually done by one or the other of us, started to become something we could do together.  

At first we walked our usual routes, or we'd mix it up by walking it in reverse,  or adding a little detour.  Then we started crossing the borders of our neighborhood and began to explore places we had never walked before.  What if walked that bike path under route 50?  What's on the other side of Glebe Road? How far can we walk down Columbia Pike?

Eventually we walked every neighborhood that we could get to from our house.  One day I looked at Bill and said, "You know, we could get in the car and drive to another neighborhood and then walk from there."  And so we did.  At some point we felt like we must have walked most of Arlington, so we found a paper bicycle map in a drawer and started to mark off all of the streets we had walked.  Well, it wasn't even close. We needed a plan. So we pinned the map up on the wall and started being more methodical planning our walks.  

We have chipped away at areas that seemed impossibly vast.  We have started using Google maps to track our walks so we can make sure we haven't missed any streets.  Some neighborhoods have a fairly logical grid to follow, but most don't.  A lot of backtracking, abruptly turning around, and walking tiny cul de sacs are par for the course. 

The hardest task has been walking the border between Arlington and Fairfax.  You have to keep your eyes open for clues: street signs change color; trash cans look different and Neighborhood Watch signs appear.  But the most reliable clue seems to be that Arlington stops where the sidewalk ends.

Mapplethorpe at the Corcoran

 

The Corcoran Gallery of Art, which is not really the Corcoran any more, has mounted a show, "6.13.89" about the cancellation of the retrospective Robert Mapplethorpe: the Perfect Moment. ( In case you don't know, the Corcoran imploded several years ago and is now owned by George Washington University. )   

The exhibit is basically flat glass cases filled with documents that tell the story of the event. 

Here is the contract for the exhibit; here is the exhibition plan; here are some newspaper articles about the show in New York.  Here are letters of people complaining about the content of the exhibit.  Here are newspaper articles in which Jesse Helms rails against the NEA for funding obscene art.  Here is the press release saying the Corcoran will be backing out of the exhibit. 

Here is  the backlash.  

Here are internal memos from within the Gallery.  Here are membership forms covered with complaints, protests and cancellations.  Here are letters from artists  refusing to show their work at the Corcoran.  

It is in an interesting story, but I can't help but think that in the general emptying out of the Corcoran, someone opened a file cabinet and said, "Look at all this stuff about the Maplethorpe exhibit, this could be a show."  And so it is.

I think the saddest document is a letter from the lawyer of David Lloyd Kreeger, a longtime supporter of the Corcoran.  He has added a codicil to Kreeger's Will rescinding previously pledged gifts to the Corcoran.  

It's really the beginning of the end for the Corcoran, it would take about two more decades, but they lost credibility, they lost financial support and they mismanaged the rest of it. 

The whole thing comes across more like a wake than an exhibit.

The Glass Labyrinth

Unlike a maze, a labyrinth has a single path to the center, after which you turn around and follow it back out.  It is meant to be a slow meditative journey.  Robert Morris has constructed  a labyrinth of glass on the grounds of the Nelson-Atkins museum in Kansas City, MO. 

I entered the labyrinth close to twilight, there was no one else around.  I walked intentionally, searching for calm.  After a few steps, I saw the imprint of a face on the glass directly in front of me.  After that, I walked with a hand extended.  I quickly learned to look for the edges of plate glass, (the height was over my head);  but the sense of uneasiness began to build.  I think the fact that I can see through the walls adds to the tension.  I walk, and I turn, and I reach dead ends, but they are not dead, I am following a path.  By the time I reach the center of the labyrinth, I actually have reached a dead end.  The panic starts to rise in my throat.  "Oh my god, I am trapped in a glass box in Kansas City!  I am trapped here forever. The death of a mime is mine!!!!!"

Okay.

But then I realize, I just need to turn around and follow the path out. Breathe, Breathe, Breathe.  I resisted the urge to walk quickly or run, because that ends in a face print on the wall.  After a few more turns in the path, a man and a woman entered the maze and smiled at me.  "Don't worry. your almost out,"  they said through the glass.  What did they know?  But I was friendly and chatted with them as we passed each other.  With my hand on the wall, I finally made it back out .  I don't know if I have ever had a sculpture unsettle me so much.  The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC has a strong emotional effect, but this was unnerving.  

Breathing deeply, I was so relieved to be out.  As I walked down the brick path running through the fresh spring grass, I began to relax.  I glanced back over my shoulder at the maze just in time to see the man bouncing off the wall with an audible "SMACK'.

I'm glad I got out of there without a bloody nose.

Fastest American You Don't Know

 Tommie Smith won a Gold medal for sprinting in the 1968 Olympics.  But what he is famous for is raising his fist on the Medal Podium in Mexico City.  The gesture was meant to show solidarity with  the Civil Rights Struggle as well as to protest human rights abuses around the world.  

But the press painted him as a radical black panther ungrateful to his country.  There was no Wheaties Box portrait for Tommie Smith.  There was no career as a commentator on Wide World of Sports.  

Almost 50 years later when artist Glenn Kaino met him, he felt that Tommie was stuck in that bubble of controversy from 1968.  Kaino spent several years collaborating with him on art projects: photographs were altered, sculpture was cast, prints were made.  

The resulting work is this exhibit at the High Museum With Drawn Arms.  The Healing power of art on display.

  

Dark Star Park Day

Arlington County in Virginia is lucky to have a site specific sculpture by Nancy Holt.  It sits on a traffic triangle and a tiny pocket park in Roslyn, the section of Arlington closest to Key Bridge.  It consists of a tunnel, giant concrete spheres, pools and metal poles and metal plates. This is a very urban area and mostly the sculpture is viewed on a drive by basis.

View from traffic island to pocket park

Once a year on August 1, at 9:32 am the sun aligns with the sculpture to cast shadows that perfectly match the metal plates that project out from the spheres and the poles. It is Arlington's little Stonehenge. 

I had admired the sculpture for years before learning about the shadow connection.  And once I knew, I wanted to see the phenomenon.  For years I have tried to show up for it, but I am either out of town, or busy, or I just forget.  For the past two years I have had it on my electronic calendar in the hopes that it would get me there.  This year I had a contractor showing up at 8:00,  but that wouldn't really interfere.  The heavy rains took a break and the sun was shining.  I had no choice but to hop on a bike and go.

Tunnel from park to sidewalk

This is where the shadow magic happens

My phone told me the event was at 9:00, but I didn't arrive until 9:06. A few people were hanging around the sculptures.  I parked my bike and walked over to someone. "So I missed it?" "No" she smiled, "it's at 9:32." Thank god I had entered the time wrong, or I probably would have missed it.  I am always overly optimistic about travel time.

The shadow is almost aligned with the steel plates on the ground

Anyway, people gathered, it was an interesting mix of office people, art people, tourists and a group on a walking tour.  Cars at the traffic light asked what we were doing; the sun occasionally popped out from behind the clouds and showed us how close we were getting to alignment. I saw at least one person I know. 

The moment arrived: people snapped pictures, people clapped. The funny thing is, taking a picture is kind of pointless: you are photographing a shadow that has disappeared. The picture looks the same as an overcast day photo.  We are all so attuned to photographing events, even the ones that we only need to experience, that we just can't help ourselves.

Okay now it's aligned

The walking tour guide spoke a few words, my two favorites being Radical Pedestrianism.  His idea of people daring to explore the world on foot.   Then he handed the megaphone to a representative from the Nancy Holt Foundation.  She talked about how pleased Nancy was with the sculpture. Her favorite part being when she saw children using their hands to paint water from the pool onto the spheres and touching the art. 

It wasn't exactly a druid moment, but I feel happy that I went.  It cost me about 45 minutes of time and a sweaty bicycle ride.  I have photographs that show nothing, but that's not the point. It's a moment in time to experience, it doesn't need to be recorded on a camera. The sculpture does that itself. It is a record of time - August 1st, 9:32 AM - in the physical world.