A Cardboard Life

The New Haven International Film Festival is on, but I stayed fairly local.  Lots of compilations of shorts, packages from D.C., Texas, New York, and Connecticut, some good, some not.

The film that blew me away was the feature-length documentary called “The Cardboard Bernini.”  Connecticut artist Jimmy Grashow constructed a full-scale recreation of the Four Rivers Fountain by Bernini (above).  Except Grashow’s version is made out of cardboard.  Originally, he wanted to sneak the work into the piazza and leave it there.  This was not to be, but the story is remarkable nonetheless.

He started working in this throwaway material as a boy, more interested in the box than any gift it contained.  I’m reminded of the many hours of hilarity my brother and I got from rolling around in the back yard inside large boxes left over from refrigerator and TV deliveries–providing so much more pleasure than the objects themselves.

So I was predisposed to like this guy.  I liked his art, too.  He did a series of 15 foot high, caricatured figures scattered in space to walk among.  While his series of 100 monkeys was considered “cute,” he was commenting on the impermanence and futility of human life.  Emptiness was the theme of the anthropomorphic buildings in “Soft City.”

These serious themes weave through his career, culminating in “The Cardboard Bernini.”  On the surface, the work is a bravura of scissors, glue, razored edges, and adze-formed curvilinear shapes.  Plus Grashow invests the recreation with his philosophy.  His vision: to make something heroic out of something no one wants, then allow it to be destroyed.  He knew he was not going to pull a Bernini feat.  Bernini–the artist who could breathe life into marble.  Grashow’s intent was different–to fill life with the knowledge of death.

Unlike marble, cardboard is perceived as worthless, and the artist says it “is grateful to be rescued from the trash.”  His intent was to rescue the material, work it, then leave the finished piece out in the elements so that it would dissolve.  Life is impermanent.  Our bodies are fragile and temporal.  So, of course, is art.

One critic commented that Grashow allows his works to be destroyed due to being disparaged by his gallerist in New York Allan Stone.  Stone left some of Granshow’s work in the alley, discarded.  Hurt and humiliated by Stone’s apparent rejection, according to the critic, the artist recreates the experience over and over in his work.  Grashow agreed.

But he reflects that more is going on as well.  The fountain is Grashow’s self-portrait in cardboard–all bluster on the outside, and at its best, revealing of the inside.  The natural process of creation includes destruction, just as in life.  For Grashow, three years of work and a museum show at the Taubman Art Museum would necessarily culminate in an outdoor exhibit at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT, and its ultimate destruction.

Grashow said he sees beauty in decay.  The disintegration process also confronts our terror of mortality.  The fountain became his vehicle, his grand statement about the impermanence of our finite vessel, our body.

At both museums, visitors could toss a wish into the fountain.  Not a coin, the wishes were written on paper, and those longings, too, would dissolve with time.

Watching the disintegration of the piece over the course of several weeks, sped up on film, was moving, unsettling, sad, and actually painful, seeing the form de-form.  Three years of work was washed away in one deluge.

The Aldrich and Grashow had a funeral for the remains, as it transitioned into a dumpster, its coffin.  Popping the cork on champagne, Grashow said the closing event was like attending his own funeral.  “It looks perfect,” he said, gazing at the remains of his art in the dumpster.

Alice Washburn and the trolley suburb

It was standing room only at the New Haven Museum this evening for an illustrated lecture on Alice Washburn, a self-trained architect. In her ten year career, Washburn built about 90 homes, mostly in one neighborhood in New Haven and in my new hood, Spring Glen in Hamden. She started on spec on one of the nicest streets in Spring Glen and with a budding reputation, worked on commissions for larger, custom homes.

But with the Depression and her own perfectionist tendencies, Washburn went bankrupt in 1931, living out her life in an apartment and dying in obscurity in 1958.  Unknown she stayed until the 1980s, when an intrepid art historian resuscitated her career.  Realtors now sell her 1920s homes for more than average.  I sat next to Jean, the owner of a Washburn home, purchased from the son of the original owner.  She received a tube in the mail, addressed to “Occupant,” containing the original blueprints.  A precious thing indeed.

Washburn  believed that women were the ideal architects because the home was the domain of women.  Does that mean she designed gender-specific qualities?  Lecturer Charlotte Hitchcock, an architect with the Connecticut Trust, didn’t know.  Apparently, her kitchens ranged in size, more suited to the house than any particular gendered use.  Jean said her four-bedroom house has two baths at either end of the hall, not a master, clearly suited to family use.

Washburn’s houses were part of a larger Colonial Revival period, lasting from about 1910-1930 and the City Beautiful movement that started in the 1890s.  During that time, monumental buildings were constructed like the stately Hamden Town Hall.  Also a focus on public health meant putting gas, electricity, and running water, as well as parks, into developed and new neighborhoods.

Attention was certainly paid to walking-oriented new developments.  Hence the trolley suburb–first horse-drawn rail ways, and later, around 1910, electric.  That’s how my neighborhood grew up.  The Webb farm was subdivided for single family homes.  The town center, literally just below my house, was the retail that emerged along the trolley line.  Still very handsome today.

But no, my house isn’t a Washburn.  It was built about 25 years after her last.  Still I hope someday, it will have a bit of that New England charm she trolled for and incorporated in her Colonial stylings.  She happily mixed in Dutch, Greek Revival, Arts and Crafts, and Federal elements.  She liked the classical and a curved walk.  My house sports one now, too!

The largest of Washburn’s houses cost $20,000 to build.  Most were modest, much less expensive.  You don’t want to know what my remodel costs!  At least, the detail and perfectionism going into this little house will honor Washburn’s spirit.

Adding up the moments

Today, like everyday, was made up of moments.  Will they add up to anything?  You tell me.

The Met Museum has opened its season of new shows, and I think I hit them all.  Just for moment.  No reading the text, no lingering, because nothing really sang to me.  And that’s more than okay.  Just soaked in some beauty.

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Before my show downtown, I caught a moment on a swing at Molly’s Cupcakes.  Creme brûlée cupcake and espresso on a swing.  Oh yeah!
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Caryl Chirchill’s play “Love and Information” is all about moments, literally.  In 100 minutes, 57 plays are performed.  Some felt like haiku, a phrase overheard on the street.  Others lingered long enough for some philosophy or a conundrum.  Some didn’t make any sense.  Others went for an easy laugh.

Some juxtaposed the obvious with the less so:  the exhausted Elvis and Liberace impersonators discussing Israeli-Palestinian relations in the bar over a drink; the clowns getting dressed in their outrageous costumes while figuring out whether to have an affair; the woman in a gown and a tuxedoed man awaiting their performance dissect the tensions in a friendship that source from mathematical theory and the psychology of the self.

I especially loved the playlets with one sentence of dialogue with an actor reaction.

“Maybe you could read them a story.”

The response–a tear.

The bride and groom on a bench.

“There’s wind surfing or swimming with the dolphins,” she says.

He turns very pale and away from her.

Language is a Churchill forte.  The dialogue is broken, overlapping, characters completing each other’s sentences.  The scene with four actors inventing stories out of a translation of the Chinese characters for girl, mountain, and door reminds me of games we played in college or a self-conscious writer’s workshop.  Gaminess both works for and against the overall effect.

The stage set is a simple box with a Sol Le Witt-style grid.  There seems to be no way on or out, so that the actors are enclosed, cocooned, trapped.  Darkness ends each playlet, interrupted by a box outlined in bare light bulbs around the vertical plane of the stage.  Loud sounds sometimes relate to the next scene, sometimes not.  Altogether, an intriguing game-like framework.

Yet at times, the show feels like acting exercises or the playwright’s experiments that should have been edited out.  But who edits Caryl Churchill?

Still, the acting, mostly in duets, is delicious, the sets magical, and the seeming randomness does add up to something–a meditation on information that is meaningless when pursued for its own sake, secrets, memory (both spectacular and faulty), and the pain that comes from closing ourselves in to our own importance.

Life is made up of random encounters and impressions that seem to be speeding up every moment.  This over-stuffed play and this day left me a bit breathless.

It only takes a moment to pause and reflect…

Soaring like an eagle

On this first day of spring, which arrived at 12:47 p.m. EST apparently,. I ventured out with hardy birding afficionados, to sail the Connecticut River for some eagle watching.  That’s bald eagles, as goldens didn’t make an appearance today.

The Connecticut River is a prime winter holiday locale for bald eagles from Canada, New York, and all around New England.  Only four birds are residents here, owners of the most expensive real estate outside of New York City.  These four own two of only 25 Connecticut nests ,staking claim to their territory.

They reuse the same nest every year, so that it grows larger and deeper.  We saw a nest that had reached four feet square, weighing in at over 200 pounds.  That’s a lot of twigs.  And a lot of weight to support for a dead or dying tree, the eagle home site favorite.  But that’s nothing compared to the record-sized 8′ x  21′ nest that literally weighed a ton!

These are big birds, with females larger than males and having a wing span of about 8 and 1/2 feet (Connecticut eagles are about mid-sized, with bald eagles from Florida’s on the small end and from Alaska as the largest).  Move over New York co-ops!  These birds need space.

Eagles mate for life and don’t stray more than 5 miles from their nest.  Homebodies, just like me.  The female lays 3 eggs, one as insurance, as the smallest (and last born) tends to die.  One of the nests this year was a failure because of the continual and late snows.  The other has done well enough.

The eagle information and eagle-eye spotting was courtesy of Mike of Eco-Tours, part of the Connecticut Audubon Society.  My first time with this group was a winner.  Just to be out in the fresh air and sunshine after a long winter (today’s water temperature measured 39.4 degrees and air temps topped out at a balmy 40), but then also to see 18 eagles, six adults, with a group of very congenial bird-hounds, it’s all good.

Yes, we saw 18 eagles, and I didn’t snap a single pix of them.  I was just so happy to be able to spot them.  But soon, even I could pick them out, soaring overhead, eagle-eyeing their world from sandbars, poised at the tops of bare trees.

Now, here’s how you can identify the age of the eagle you’re seeing.  Go get out your binocs!

It takes the eagle four years to get its white head and tail.  At one year old, it will be tawny with speckles.  Except for its size, you might think it’s a turkey vulture.  We saw a lot of those, too.

A 2-3 year old bird will have a white belly, immediately identifiable when flying.  But only the 3 year old will also have a racoon’s mask.  Now, you’re ready to go.

We followed the path that steamers had taken 200 years ago.  But since none of us had a pig, we didn’t have to pay the extra nickel.

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The eagles aren’t the only sites along the river.  There’s Goodspeed Opera House, as pretty as a postcard from the water.

We saw the location of where, in 1814, the British burned 27 American ships in Essex Harbor, during the War of 1812.  And we saw the remains of burned out buildings from a party gone too wild last week.

 

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My pictures failed of the house with a tree growing through its deck.  And I think I have repair problems!

I do like this little red art studio built over the water (click on any image for a larger view and then you back button to return to this post).

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Then there’s the Academy at Mount St. Johns, where street-hardened boys are brought for another chance.  The motto: “better to make a boy than mend a man.”  Amen.

 

 

 

 

2014-03-20 11.42.31My favorite was Gillette Castle, the most Romantic spot, with its evocative ruins.  Gillette was an eccentric actor, who spent $1 million to build this castle in 1913.  He promised his wife he would never marry again, if she predeceased him.

And guess what?  He was good to his word.  The castle was party-central for this now-single man with more money than sense.  After his death, he didn’t want “the idiots to run it,” so he left the castle and his land to the state, and it’s now a Connecticut State Park.

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I’ve added it to the list of must-visits!

 

 

 

 

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Lots of wonderful rock formations.  Above is Elephant Rock, named for its seemingly wrinkled skin, just like a pachyderm’s.  Don’t know the name of this one.

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Then there was this moment, when the river turned glass still.  So quiet.  Pristine.  Near the cove with its 90 degree water.  And the world stopped.  Nary a bird in sight.  Just clouds and trees and sky and stillness.

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At times like this, the imagination can soar like an eagle.  So I’m glad to share an image or two with you, in case you’d like a little time to soar yourself.

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Pictures of the day:

Man.  Rock.  House

Man. Rock. House

 

Water.

Water.

 

A little song in your heart

As you know, I record narration for the blind.  Tonight, at a voice-over recording meeting, in a tiny studio at CRIS (The Connecticut Radio Information System, Inc.), who came by, but a barbershop quartet!

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You never know when you’ll be surprised by a song.

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Some guys will be wandering along, see you in your office, put on a striped vest, black bow tie, and straw bowler, and well, start to sing.

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In four-part harmony.  And so I sing the tale to you…ou…ou.  “Good night, Ladies…”

Luck of the Irish

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I have never quite understood the phrase, “Luck of the Irish.”  Does that mean good luck or bad luck?  Well, I guess a bit of both were at work at New Haven’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade today.

The green stripe marks the parade route, which went right in front of my building

The green stripe marks the parade route, which went right in front of my building

 

The good?  Two full hours of parading bands, dignitaries, hawkers, skaters, truckers, beauties, bagpipers, politicians, noise makers, marchers tossing candy to the kids, and the guy in a weird costumes.

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A gryphon?

A gryphon?

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The bad: 6 degree windchill.  That’s hundreds and hundreds of red ears and ruddy cheeks of marchers choosing vanity over warmth.  Brrrr, the bare knees of bagpipers and bare shoulders of the St. Patrick’s Day Queen–?

 

 

Which brings me to the existential questions.

Why does a patron saint need a queen?  Or was this before strictures about marriage in the Catholic Church?  Or was Saint Patrick not a religious person (I’m showing my ignorance here)?2014-03-16 14.17.57

Aren’t bagpipes Scottish?  And who originated the fife-and-drum marching band?

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Why, in a parade devoted to the patron saint of Ireland, are most of the marchers military, along with every high school band?  What’s with all the American flags?  Bands playing “Yankee Doodle Dandy” and “Battle Hymn of the Republic”…what about “When Irish Eyes are Smiling?  Is this really just July 4 in mid-March?

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Where are the Pope and all the bishops?  What about the monks and nuns?  Now, that’s a parade I want to see!

But who doesn’t love a drum band?

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Charlie’s World

Every walking tour adds something fresh to the now familiar streets of downtown New Haven and the old Yale campus.  Today, Charles Ives provides the layer added to the history cake.

Who knew that the experimental composer and dour organist was actually a party-hardy type at Yale?  Tracing his lineage to a New Haven founder William Ives, Charlie was a fourth generation Ives to attend the university, where he studied music.  His father, a Civil War band leader, pushed him away from his athletic prowess toward his other passion for music, after his son broke his nose playing football. Charlie was a star pitcher and probably would have relished playing at Yale’s indoor baseball field.  But he kept his word to his dad.

Jim Sinclair, right, and Kendall Crilly, Music Director, Center Church

Jim Sinclair, right, and Kendall Crilly, Music Director, Center Church

 

 

Perhaps you know Ives’s music well enough to remember the melancholy quality much of it has.  Jim Sinclair, our guide and Orchestra of New England conductor, attributed this wistful tonality to the death of his father, just weeks after Charlie arrived at Yale.

 

 

 

 

 

Wolf’s Head, Yale campus

Still, Charlie Ives was a popular, funny, frat boy, who joined a secret society, the Wolf’s Head, and generally made the most of Yale’s social life.  He played ragtime and musical stunts on the piano.  One I wish I could have heard was his 1897, two minute musical version of the Harvard-Yale football game, with Yale’s surprise victory.  He wrote songs for the frat shows at the Hyperion, with the om-pah-pah drinking song “Pass the Can Along” becoming a crowd favorite.

Knowing this biography helps me understand how pop culture music made its way into his symphonic works, along with the familiar patriotic anthems his father must have played that wind through pieces like “Fourth of July.”

Charles ives lived here for four years, in dumpy Old South Middle, now Connecticut Hall

Charles ives lived here for four years, in dumpy Old South Middle, now Connecticut Hall

 

As you might imagine, Charlie wasn’t the best academically.  Apparently, he was a “gentleman’s C,” meaning a D+ student.  Just not where he genius lay.

Sports and music were his gifts.  Ives was a professional organist by the age of 13, and when he arrived at Yale, he played for Center Church, founded along with New Haven in 1638.  He had more freedom to experiment there than he did as a music student at Yale.

We were treated to one of his student compositions on the Church’s organ, 2014-03-08 11.52.31two generations removed from the smaller and boxier one Ives played.  The three minute “C Minor Fugue” seemed like it could have been written 200 years earlier, following all the traditional compositional rules.  Nothing would indicate the kind of work he was to produce.

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Kendall Crilly plays C Minor Fugue

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tonight’s concert will feature Ives’s more playful college work, as well as fragments that survive, including one inspired by sunrise at East Rock.

1872 engraving of East Rock in New Haven

 

For all his liveliness, Ives could be shy, too.  He ventured with his fiance Harmony Twitchell to meet the parents in Hartford.  Her father was friends with Mark Twain, as they had been innocents abroad together.  So the family went to see the venerable author, sitting with him on his porch.

Twain recognized how uncomfortable Ives was and did nothing to ease the awkwardness.  Instead he stared.  Which only made things worse for Ives.  Eventually, Twain reportedly said, “The fore’s okay.  Let’s spin him around, and see the aft.”

Harmony and Charles Ives

 

The young couple transcended that memorable moment and grew old together.

 

 

 

 

Stories like this one turn the icon into a man.  Jim concluded the tour by commenting on the “humanity that permeates the music” of Ives.  With new insights on what can be difficult music, I hope to listen with new ears.

Another discovery:

Cornelius Vanderbilt built this dorm with its luxuriant gates for his sons' comfort while attending Yale.  Cole Porter lived here later.  This dorm is adjacent to the much more modest housing Ives inhabited.

Cornelius Vanderbilt built this dorm with its luxuriant gates for his sons’ comfort while attending Yale. Cole Porter lived here later. This dorm is adjacent to the much more modest housing Ives inhabited.