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Last December I was contacted out of the blue by someone interested in using a couple of pictures I'd taken of Richard Serra's sculpture "The Hedgehog and The Fox" three years earlier. The pictures came out of one of the projects I'd given myself during while spending a few months with Kyle in New Jersey: to visit and photograph as many of the many public artworks as I could around the Princeton university campus where she worked.
Although I'd devoted quite a bit of time to the project (which I described in a blog post about it back in 2009, complete with map), I hadn't really thought much more about the pictures until my correspondant got in touch via Flickr - his interest was in using them in a couple of Wikipedia articles (one about the fable of The Fox and The Cat, and another subsequently about the sculpture itself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox_(sculpture)) - so it was an opportunity to revisit both the pictures and the memories that associated with them (and with my life generally at that time).
In particular I remember one of the things I enjoyed about working on the project was actually taking the time to look more closely and for longer at the artworks than I might have done if I'd just been passing. It was often quite a challenge to take pictures that I felt captured what I was actually seeing - particularly for the large abstract sculptures like "The Hedgehog and The Fox", Upstart 2 and Northwood II - and in trying to find interesting angles for my pictures I felt that I had to engage with them to a greater degree, at least at a physical level. In this regard "The Hedgehog and The Fox" was particularly memorable - at its most basic level it's essentially three huge undulating rusty metal walls, sat between the Lewis library and the football stadium. But if you get up close then it towers over you, and walking between pairs of its walls can feel quite eerie and even a little oppressive (especially if the light's starting to fade at the end of a New Jersey winter afternoon, and you're on your own). To some extent it seemed to be a sculpture that you had to experience first-hand to really appreciate.
Some of the artworks were made more interesting by knowing something of their backstory: two very different
examples are George Segal's "Abraham and Issac" (intended as a memorial for the 1970 incident at Kent State University
where unarmed students were shot by members of the Ohio National Guard)
and Jacques Lipschitz's "Song of the Vowels" (which is based around the idea of the harp). In the case of "The Hedgehog and The Fox" I've now learned that the artist had a very specific message that he wished to communicate: based on the idea that "the fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one great thing", he suggested that "There are those who follow on principle in all they do - the hedgehogs - and those who look to different approaches at the same time - the foxes." Basically Princeton students are encouraged to cultivate the flexible, creative and inventive qualities of the fox rather than the more rigid and inflexible thinking of the hedgehog.
(As an aside: the process of allowing Wikipedia to use my pictures turned out out to be quite frustrating for my correspondant but I found it interesting to go through - I learned that Wikipedia actually requires quite a permissive licence before it will accept photos for use - in the end explicitly licensing them under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 and sending a message based on the template in Wikipedia's "Declaration of consent for all enquiries" page did the trick.)
Since then I've had other requests to use pictures, including another from my "Princeton artworks" project (Pevsner's "Construction in the Third and Fourth Dimensions"), and I always enjoy getting these enquiries - just
like the original sculptures, the pictures themselves also have a
personal significance for me which it's nice to have an excuse to recall, and it gives me a warm feeling to know that other people I've never met find the pictures interesting. Please feel free to visit: "Princeton Artworks" on Flickr.
This time I had a bit longer and remembered to bring my camera, so one evening I decided I would get a few photos - I think that these are the kinds of things that Kyle would enjoy seeing and maybe she would enjoy the pictures. While I was busy snapping away a woman came and asked me why I was taking pictures - I was sure that I was going to get told off! But it turned out that she was Anne Griffith's - Diamond's "artist in residence" - and had been responsible for the collaboration of different artists that had produced the work.
She told me that she has a studio in office space next to the synchrotron ring, and that the panels - collectively called "Designs for Life" - were one of a number of different collaborations between artists and scientists at the lab. She also told me about how the panels had come to be produced, including one that featured stitching from many of the scientists - including the laboratory director. She also pointed out some other artworks in the atrium that I hadn't noticed before.
It was interesting to hear about the stories behind the art. To me they bring some warmth to the grand but possibly rather clinical atrium space, and also reveal the beauty in the science which is appreciated by scientists but sadly not always made visible to a lay audience - and in this (and in the source of their inspiration) they reminded me of similar designs for the 1951 Festival of Britain (celebrated in last year's "Atoms to Patterns" exhibition at the Wellcome Trust.
Anne has a website at http://www.pocketmouse.co.uk/ which talks about the "Designs for Life" project (amongst others) as part of her residency at Diamond - and you can see some of the panels in my (totally unofficial and completely unauthorise!) "Designs for Life" set on Flickr. Enjoy the collision of art, textiles and science!
I've been doing a particularly poor job of posting to this blog since I arrived in New Jersey, and tomorrow Kyle and I are flying out to Myrtle Beach so the situation is unlikely to improve over the next week.In my defence, it's been a busy couple of weeks. In fact, just like the very real hurricanes swirling out in the Atlantic this time of year, it feels like we've been caught in our own metaphorical New Jersey hurricane - in between visiting our lawyer, buying our rings and attending the very rocking bowling alley wedding of our friends Chris and Christine, we've also been designing our wedding stationary, and checking out possible venues. Kyle has been doing a great job keeping up with this whirlwind in her blog (start with her "Wedding logo draft posting" and work your way forward, if you want more details or check out our great designs!).
In the odd minutes left over from all that, I've been enjoying being back in New Jersey now that it's summer - it's warm enough to go out without a coat, and the air is filled with the loud high-frequency clicking sound of the cicadas. It's pretty neat. Meanwhile there's also a few changes on the Princeton campus, which seems to be undergoing maintenance before the fall semester: the "marching figures" have disappeared from the front of the Art Museum, Upstart 2 has lost its black paint job (now more in keeping with the artist's intentions), and until earlier this week my favourite fake Picasso sculpture had also been under wraps.
Also, random people seem to be more talkative now. They're often interested in where I'm from, and how the weather differs between the US and the UK (my take: generally the climate in NJ is quite similar to back home, although a bit more consistent than back home, and with greater extremes - the summer being much hotter, and the winter is much colder). They're also interested in knowing if I follow soccer, and seem disappointed when I say I don't (I might start trying to bluff my way through it in future).
Anyway, fun as it is all is, after running around for the last few of weeks it'll be fun to finally get away to South Carolina for a bit: sun, sea and sand, miniature golf and great food at the K&W. I'm sure Kyle will be blogging in real time while we're there, otherwise - see you when we get back. Aloha!
The figures themselves are fascinating, spread out quite far apart from each other, some close to the sand dunes and others partially submerged by the sea even at low tide. They're corroding in interesting ways and some are even covered in barnacles. Add them to the farm of huge wind turbines just off-shore and you can't help wondering - if humankind disappeared tomorrow, what would future beings make of this peculiar landscape?
I spent a while wandering between the figures taking pictures of them and the turbines (I love wind turbines! and how they dominate the seafront here) and the beached jellyfish slowly evaporating to nothing in the sun - one of the quietly strangest things I've seen for a while. It was a great place to spend an hour watching ships coming and going, and distant flocks of seabirds darting around like swarms of bees - an angry smudge out to sea.
Walking up the beach I passed a UFO-like building that turned out to be a leisure centre with a very nice looking swimming pool visible through the tinted glass, and I was sorry that I'd decided not to bring my trunks and towel. I like to swim in new places and my recent trip to Hathersage pool had reminded me of the kind of fun water can be when you give up on swimming lengths once in a while. Maybe I'll come back out here again sometime and give it a try.
The Gormley figures are dotted along roughly 2 miles of the beach, and after a while I started to get that Groundhog Day-like feeling that surely I'd already passed this figure a few minutes earlier? In spite of the potential that the figures seem to offer for "decoration", only a couple stood out - I suppose that the sea and other elements take their toll and clean the figures up pretty effectively. Elsewhere the beachfront reminded me a little of the boardwalk around Seagirt and Spring Lake in New Jersey, with big houses set back from the beach behind the sand dunes.
Finally past the figures I followed the trail through the sand dunes, seeing some interesting trees, flowers and butterflies, but at some point I must have missed a turning because I ended up in what looked like a rather well-appointed suburb in Hightown. From here I struggled to find the trail again, eventually finding a path that skirts the Altcar rifle training camp from where I heard sounds of gunfire from behind the sand dunes as I plodded onwards. Finally I found a path that headed back towards the beach, lured by the sight of the blades of the wind turbines (which looked tantalising close but - like the moon - are actually always the same distance away wherever you are).
The stretch of beach that I came out on was like a wasteland, devoid of people but with a line of debris next to the dunes that disappeared into the distance - wheels, road signs, rubber gloves (so many rubber gloves!), trees, gas cylinders, on and on and on. The whole scene was reminiscent of something from the film "Addicted to Plastic" - with the oddest sight being this collection of odd shoes:
Eventually however I made it back to Crosby beach for high tide and a last look at the figures before heading home. It was a long day and more than a little surreal in several places - to be honest the desolate beach with washed up junk was probably the strangest, and my pictures from there don't convey even a fraction of what it was really like. But it was certainly a memorable trip and I'm glad that I went.
See my pictures of the Gormley figures, wind turbines, debris and other stuff on Flickr.
I heard this evening on the radio that Manchester city council have decided to dismantle and store the B of the Bang, the eye-catching public artwork that currently stands outside the Manchester City stadium.
The sculpture is a prominent feature on the city skyline and is visible from trains leaving Manchester Piccadilly station for Stockport, and was inspired by a quote from the sprinter Lindford Christie, who said he started races "not merely at the 'bang' of the starting pistol, but at 'The B of the Bang'". To me it looks like the glorious cartoon explosion that its name suggests.
Last October I finally made a trip out to see it up close and take some pictures. Disappointingly the sculpture was fenced off, which I found out later was due to safety concerns - some of its enormous steel spikes had come loose shortly after completion in 2005. But it was still an impressive sight and it's sad to hear that it will be taken down, in spite of all the controversy over the cost and other issues that seem to plague public artworks in Britain.
It's not clear when the B of the Bang will be taken down so it's probably worth a trip out there now if you want to see it before it goes. The council have said that the sculpture could be reinstated if the technical problems with the spikes are overcome (for example, replacing them with new ones made from lighter weight materials) however they are unwilling to spend more public funds on it now.
I guess that's fair enough, but I for one will miss its spectacular presence on the Manchester skyline when it's gone and the view is a little less interesting.
My starting point was the 1995 online article "Strolling Among Sculpture on Campus" by Jennifer Sheppard, which gives a good overview of many of the pieces as well as hints on where they can be found. I also bought a copy of the "Sculpture of Princeton University" guidebook from the Art Museum shop, which cost around $5 and has drawings and more detailed descriptions for 24 of the works on campus. It also has a map which proved invaluable in locating many of the pieces.
As I've gone along, I've been adding the pictures to a set on Flickr called (unsurprisingly) "Princeton Artworks", as well as building an interactive Google map which shows where each of the artworks are, to the best of my abilities. On my wanderings I also came across what I considered to be artworks but which weren't in the book, for example the many tiger statues that are dotted around campus.
You can click on a marker below (or in a larger size map) to go on your own virtual tour:
View Larger Map
I think that the project made me look at the artworks in a different way than I might have just walking past them every day. Looking for interesting angles for my photographs also gave me a reason to spend more time looking at them, and I think that in some cases this made me appreciate them more - particularly the ones that I initially didn't find that interesting. Also, searching them out gave me an excuse to explore the campus and in doing that I stumbled across other things that I wouldn't otherwise have found.
It's hard to pick favourites, however if I really had to choose then Upstart 2 and Mastadon VI are probably the ones that I liked the most from the official collection. I also liked the metallic tiger statues outside the stadium - it was seeing pictures of these elsewhere that got me started. Of the "serendiptiously found" works, I think maybe Clouds Nine is the one that I would pick as my favourite. But really I think that all the artworks have something in them that I like - I didn't take pictures of the ones that didn't.
You could argue that the project isn't really complete: there were a few pieces that I wasn't able to find, such as Eduardo Paolozzi's "Marok-Marok Miosa" (I think it has been relocated or stored for now), and other sculptures or murals that could also be considered artworks. However for now I think it's enough. So I hope that you enjoy looking at the map and the pictures.
It seems really strange to me - back in England you just don't suddenly get spring-like weather in the middle of winter. Nobody else seems particularly perturbed - apparently it's due to southerly winds blowing (relatively) warm air up from the Gulf of Mexico. Maybe they're just enjoying while it lasts, since it's already getting colder again this evening.
In the meantime I thought that I would take advantage of the rain to get some pictures of things reflected in puddles, loosely inspired by M.C. Escher's lithograph "Three Worlds". My photos weren't ever going to be a patch on Escher's original, but it was an interesting exercise and provided an excuse to stop and look at some familiar things in a slightly different way.
The forecast for tomorrow and the rest of the week is more rain, perhaps even snow, which sounds more like winter to me. Perhaps I'm just odd but personally I prefer the colder weather. This warm stuff just doesn't seem quite right in December - and certainly not like it's nearly Christmas!
