In his four years traveling the globe, Charles Darwin filled notebook upon notebook of observations and experiences—enough source material for the scientist to pen “On the Origin of Species.” Now, Florentine artist Leonardo Magnani hopes to…
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by Hunter Hess The brainchild of Portland, Oregon-based artist Gage Hamilton, public mural project Forest for the Trees recently brought together over a dozen artists from five countries to…
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A city forever changing, dotted with many historic attributes: A resort location starting in the mid-1850s near enough to New York City and Philadelphia, the longest continuous boardwalk in the world, the East Coast’s original gambling capital, further popularized by television culture. Of…
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It’s been two months since “Red, Yellow and Blue” opened in NYC at Madison Square Park, and every day it continues to leave a gaze-worthy impression on passerby who are unsure how to approach the spilled,…
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When we last checked in with Leo Villareal one year ago, he had just proposed The Bay Lights, an ambitious project aimed at blanketing San Francisco’s Bay Bridge with 25,000 outward-facing LEDs for a light show of epic proportions. Like many concepts, the idea was almost too fantastical to…
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The long-lasting engineering behind the Fourth Plinth project
For centuries model-makers and artists have played with the challenge of building a ship in a bottle, and in May 2010, British-Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE erected the largest to date for the Fourth Plinth commission in Trafalgar Square. On view for the past 18 months, the five-meter-long bottle is not only a historical tribute to the location it serves, but it is also a significant engineering feat, packing 37 large sails inside and featuring a beautifully robust glass exterior that has held up to the blustery London weather.
Looking back on the amount of time in which the 1:30-scale model spent on resting on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, David Segall, an engineer at Max Fordham LLP in London, explained some of the project’s challenges. The engineering firm, which usually works on large building projects like the expansion of the Tate Modern, treated Shonibare’s work no differently. Segall explained that engineering is about problem-solving, and the Shonibare project had some unique conditions to overcome. The team had to make sure that condensation wouldn’t form inside the bottle, the cork wouldn’t shout out, pressure wouldn’t break the bottle and that wood on the ship wouldn’t crack or grow mold. Plus, they had to design a special lighting system for proper nighttime viewing.
Segall showed us the mathematical equation that determined the “cork pressure” and a whole set of drawings outlining the mechanical systems managing the air temperature inside the bottle. The scaled-down sales on the HMS Victory appear to be flapping in the ocean breeze, but it’s actually from fans circulating air, and the portholes in the base of the structure serve as functional air vents.
A preprogrammed SIM card inside the base of the statue sends a message to a slew of mechanics and project managers if something does malfunction, but Segall said he didn’t think any problems had actually arisen over the last year and a half. When repairs or maintenance do have to be performed, the base opens to access the mechanics of the system, so you probably won’t ever see someone inside the bottle.
A trademark of Shonibare’s work has been his exploration of the colonial relationship between Europe and Africa, especially through the use of “African” fabric, which was introduced to Europe by Dutch sailors. Shonibare placed the batik fabric on his miniature version of the naval ship, perhaps the most important vehicle of Britain’s imperial expansion.
The Max Fordham team will relocate the structure to a permanent location in January—if the funds can be raised, it will go to the National Maritime Museum in London. “The whole brief changes,” says Segall. “We have more freedoms because we are working on locating the structure in a permanent location, but every location has its own problems that we’ll have to solve.” When asked if Shonibare knew about all of the engineering considerations that went into the project, Segall laughed. “He must have some idea of the challenges of his ideas, but he never worked directly with our team.” After all, why bother an artist with technicalities of the real world?
Photos by Aaron Kohn
MoMA screens the true-story adventure of tracking down boxcar graffiti’s most notorious artist
One man’s sixteen-year quest to track down the elusive artists of a moniker that’s been appearing in railyards across America for 80-odd years is beautifully captured in the 56-minute documentary Who is Bozo Texino? The film debuted in 2005 and since its creator—filmmaker, trainrider and Guggenheim Fellow Bill Daniel—has taken the film on the road to more than 400 venues large and small.
Shot in black-and-white 16mm film with a Bolex camera, Daniel uses the scrawled moniker of Bozo Texino, an expressionless man wearing a large stetson, to explore the themes restlessness and freedom, hardship and entrapment and the many contradictions that exist for those that live on the rails.
This week Daniel brings the film to the MOMA for a rare special screening in Manhattan. He’ll be joined by Gary Fogelson who designed and edited the companion book, Mostly True, which elaborates on the mythic Bozo Texino and how its legacy reflects a largely invisible subculture that ride the nation’s rails and has existed in parallel to mainstream society since the Civil War.
“I don’t want to give too much away about Bozo, the film, or the mystery behind it all because people should come and find that out for themselves,” Folgelson recently told Cool Hunting. “I will say that the folks featured in this film (and book) are well known unknowns, and their work is an important piece in the history of American folk art.”
View a clip here featuring one of the many interviews of tramps and hobos Daniel encounters along the way. The DVD is also available for purchase direct from Daniel
on his website or from Amazon.
A Brooklyn-based zine for creative kids
An aptly-titled children’s zine, R.A.D. (aka Read and Draw) gears its publication toward creative children and their parents in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg and Park Slope neighborhoods. Each clever issue takes up a particular seasonal or educational theme, packing more imagination than a Pixar holiday party into every page. Recent installments include a trip to the zoo, astronauts in space and Thanksgiving.
By engaging kids with a range of activities like building a tepee, identifying endangered species, writing poems and more, R.A.D.’s biggest contribution may be its dedication to programs and creative content for kids in NYC (where the public school arts budget will be cut by 31% in 2011).
Published bi-weekly, R.A.D. is a free zine distributed through a network of children’s boutiques and schools around Brooklyn. (We spied it at Sweet William in Williamsburg.)
What happens when you ask people what they think about race? Who they are and their dreams? What happens when you ask them to write it down? Photographer Wing Young Huie did just that, wandering a six-mile-long stretch of University Avenue in Saint Paul, Minnesota to create his newest public art installation, The University Avenue Project.
The public photo gallery and community outreach project, funded by Public Art Saint Paul, hopes to illuminate and connect the diverse population of the area.
Huie asked his subjects eight prompts: Who are you? Describe yourself in a couple of sentences. How do you think others see you? What don’t they see? What advice would you give a stranger? What is your favorite word? Describe an incident that changed you. How has race affected you? The resulting startlingly earnest beautiful photographs make up the subject of a book as well as an exhibition.
Huie was inspired by his father, a Chinese immigrant who couldn’t understand his drive to become a photographer, yet served as an example of strength and hard work. His migrant roots reflect Huie’s focus, with University Avenue functioning as a hub for visiting and newly minted U.S. citizens, showing a wide range of people and their experiences.
Photographs of residents holding chalkboard signs boasting daunting messages make up the majority of the book, but Huie also captured longform interviews that add to the engaging portrait of University Avenue. The first volume of the book includes these interviews, as well as essays and insights by Huie on the project, with Volume 2 set to come out 1 August 2010.
This is not Huie’s first foray into public art. His first solo exhibition, “Frogtown: Portrait of a Neighborhood,” revamped a former porn store into an art space. Huie expanded the initial public art seed into “Lake Street USA,” a six-mile-long exhibition with photographs displayed on shop windows and bus stops.
His intentions with The University Avenue Project are “to capture not the exotic or dramatic, but the normal everyday of people living. I wanted to pursue an aesthetic that was hopefully less voyeuristic, deflating the distance between viewer and subject.”
In addition to Huie’s book, his images will be displayed along University Avenue in shop and office windows through September 2010. At night they will be projected onto 40 giant screens accompanied by local musicians at the “Project(tion) site,” an outdoor space created by arts agency Northern Lights. The nightly events also include Cabarets held monthly beginning 29 May 2010. View the complete schedule from The University Avenue Project site. Prints are also available, from $30 to $1,500. Volume 1 of The University Avenue Project sells online from the Minnesota Historical Society for $13.
In an effort to bridge gaps between two neighborhoods of Boston, digital media artist John Ewing created the public art project Virtual Street Corners. The project, set to unveil June 2010, uses live video feeds between Boston locales Brookline and Roxbury to encourage neighborly affection between the predominantly African-American and Jewish neighborhoods.
Social action site Dowser highlights Ewing’s effort, which his experience creating public murals around town inspired. In conversations with the public he found people kept to their own neighborhoods, rarely venturing beyond familiar stomping grounds. Virtual Street Corners aims to mediate that disconnect by using video and microphones to encourage virtual dialogue.
The project has already gained attention for its forward-thinking ideals and technology—Virtual Street Corners won grants from the Black Rock Arts Foundation and the Knight Foundation, and is a finalist for a Cambridge Arts Council grant.
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