Shacks at the Danforth Museum--We do quirky right


20 Parking Shacks are featured in the 2007 New England
Photography Biennial at the Danforth Museum of Art

September 9 - October 28, 2007

Jurors : Karen Haas Curator of the Lane Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Arlette Kayafas Director of the Kayafas Gallery, Boston

The show opened last night and we had a lot of fun on a very sultry late summer evening. Met lots of great folks. The show got a write up in the Boston Globe, read the full review

An excerpt:

Ask Karen Haas, curator of the Museum of Fine Arts Lane Collection, about the range of work chosen, and the excitement in her voice is palpable.

"Some of the work that we particularly loved felt very personal," said Haas, who cocurated this year's biennial with Arlette Kayafas, director of Kayafas Gallery of Boston. "For example, Robert Knight basically goes into people's homes with their permission, but without knowing them . . . and photographs their possessions and objects of meaning, and the images he captures are really very telling and really quite beautiful in the way they capture the light."

She goes on to discuss newcomer Josh Winer, who creates "fascinating images out of piles of raw materials with no sense of context, so you have no idea whether you're looking at a pile of sand or a mountain of it."

Then there's Amber Davis Tourlentes's portraits of alternative families, who she photographs while grouped together on a stage.

Or Erik Gould, who "takes the banal and makes it quirky" with a series of photos of, say, parking shacks.



Describing the Dreyfus










The show opens this week!



AS220 Project Space 93 Mathewson St.
Providence www.as220.org

June 20-27 2007

Opening Reception: Wednesday June 20, 7-9 pm

Gallery hours: Noon- 6pm Tuesday - Friday
Noon- 4pm Saturday and by appointment


About the project:

This has been an 18 month photography project undertaken by the AS220 DARKROOM. Beginning in December 2005 a team of photographers, which has included several young photographers from the Photographic Memory program, have individually photographed the Dreyfus Hotel. The only request made of each participating artist was that their work be inspired by the Dreyfus Hotel and that their finished work be in the form of still photographs. Both documentary and aesthetic in nature, their images have created a unique record of the transformation of this handsome turn of the 20th century hotel into a vibrant mixed use arts complex that has undergone a stunning historic restoration at the turn of the 21st century.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS:
PAUL CLANCY, DAVID ELLIS, ERIK GOULD, SCOTT LAPHAM, SUSAN MOBLEY PHOTOGRAPHIC MEMORY

It's Flag Day!


flag 02
Originally uploaded by e_pics
June 14th. In honor of that here are some tidbits on Old Glory:

What Is a Flag?

According to the National Flag Code, the flag of the United States is any flag of the United States, or any part thereof, made of any substance, of any size, accurate or not, that is recognized as a flag by the reasonable observer.

(What other flags of the US are there? There is, or was, an American Civil Flag. It had vertical stripes.)

The flag should never be used for advertising purposes in any manner whatsoever.

Advertising signs should not be fastened to a staff or halyard from which the flag is flown.

No part of the flag should ever be used as a costume or athletic uniform.

The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery.

The flag should not be embroidered on such articles as cushions or handkerchiefs and the like, printed or otherwise impressed on paper napkins or boxes or anything that is designed for temporary use and discard.

The flag represents a living country and is itself considered a living thing.

A walk along Route 2

Thank you Flickr for making it easy to pull things from the archives and give them a home. This Route 2 project is one such thing. Here is the story: I was invited to participate in the "America 24/7" book project. Those are those big colorful books full of puppies and kids with ice cream cones. I thought they asked the wrong guy but no, they said, we want a lot of different view points and here is some cash and an olympus digital camera and so I said o.k.. I proposed that I walk a section of state Route 2. (I also visited every doughnut shop within 5 miles of Providence City Hall, there are over 50, but that is another piece).

Rhode Island’s Route 2 has become in effect the state’s “Main St.” Since the 1960’s much of the state’s commercial activity has shifted to a ten mile stretch of the road. Rhode Island’s first mall was built there, and then the state's second mall, built right next door. Route 2 leads south from Providence through the older suburbs of Cranston into the town of Warwick, where open spaces attracted the developers of housing tracts and retail plazas. Reflecting a time when towns were a bit farther apart the road changes names frequently over the ten mile stretch that I walked, shifting from Reservoir Road in Cranston to New London Ave., to Bald Hill Road and finally to Quaker Lane. I photographed along Route 2 in two phases. On May 15 of 2003 I walked south from a shopping and housing development in Cranston called Garden City. This development was built in the bowl of land left behind by the state’s only coal mine. Across the street are the derelict stone buildings of the former Sockanassett Facility for Boys,(these have now been redeveloped) followed by the state prison, referred to locally as the “aye-see-eye”, the Adult Correctional Institution. Just beyond that is a mini golf course. And then the retail action gets underway.

Like many such roads Route 2 is a harsh place for a pedestrian. Sidewalks begin and end with no connections between, crosswalks are infrequent and then disappear all together. Traffic moving at or above the speed limit of 45 mph seems much faster from the shoulder. Even though many stop lights do not have crosswalks, thoughtful traffic engineers have still provided curb cuts, so in case one is traveling in a wheel chair that can do 0-60 in less than 5 seconds one could still cross the street. The rest of us have merely to wait for a break in traffic, and then run like hell. This is a harsh road for motorists as well. MapQuest.com states the 7.8 miles I walked the first day can be driven in 11 minutes, and that may be true at 4:00 am, but on most days the trip takes much longer, and the frustration is clear at each stop light. On May 16th I walked north from Garden City through the heart of Cranston into Providence. This is the older stretch, the buildings are smaller and closer together and generally closer to the street. Interspersed are houses. These houses are rather lost. They are surrounded by parking lots and some have surrendered completely, giving way to hair salons and real estate offices. Some surprisingly are still lived in, I see their occupants working on their yards, seemingly oblivious to the roar of traffic that drowns out lawn mowers and most coherent thought. These places are however, as the realtors say, close to shopping.
Still one can see the older streetscape eroding as newer stores move in, with their setbacks to provide convenient parking up front. Shabby in parts, shiny and new in others, Route 2 is a reflection of the commercial hopes and desires of Rhode Islanders.

A small handful of these pictures made it (thumbnail size) into the 24/7 book, which can still be found in bargain bins across the country.

Alco? I don't think so...

A few words about the "American Locomotive Works " (ALCO) development project now underway on Valley St. in Providence. Once upon a time there was a railroad locomotive factory on part of this site. This was the Rhode Island Locomotive Works, founded in 1866 and located on Hemlock Street. Between 1866 and 1899 the company produced some 3400 steam locomotives. In 1901 the company was merged with several other locomotive builders to form the American Locomotive Company, headquartered in Schenectady NY. At this point the Rhode Island works had already begun to diversify, shifting production towards a line of automobiles and trucks. This move was ultimately unsuccessful, and the Providence factory closed in 1907.

By the time American Locomotive became officially known as ALCO Products in 1955, and even before that, when the locomotive depicted on the SBER banners (a diesel, model DL-109) was produced in the 1940's, locomotive production on this site was just a distant memory. Only one small building remains with any connection to RI Locomotive Works. SBER Co. may well wish to market the idea that their tenants are living and working in a restored locomotive factory. They may even fill it with big murals of steam and diesel locomotives. While I have no objection to murals of locomotives, this notion is just a developers fiction, a kind of Disneyfication of our industrial heritage. Most of the buildings on the site were built by the U.S. Rubber Co. Perhaps that is the history that should be celebrated (or exploited, as the case may be) here. Meanwhile, back in Schenectady, the real ALCO plant sits largely unused, having closed for good in 1969. It was at this site that the company built more steam locomotives than any other builder. This factory built the famous "Big Boy" locomotives, the world's largest, and built tanks during WWI and WWII. It was ALCO, alone of any of the U.S. steam locomotive builders that successfully made the transition to diesel manufacturing. Hopefully someday this site and this history will be preserved and celebrated as it should.

One more note on the locomotive depicted on the banners. The banners show a stylized but pretty accurate DL-109, which is an interesting choice. The New Haven Railroad (NYNH&H) owned by far the largest group of these engines, 60 out of 74 produced. They saw many years of service on the Boston to New York mainline, passing quite close to the site along Harris Ave. This line is now part of Amtrak's northeast corridor route.
photo of New Haven DL-109 from: http://www.northeast.railfan.net/

Lack of Vision will Sink the Station

More on the Pawtucket - Central Falls train station. First, some background: Built in 1915 by the NYNH&H Railroad, this station has some unique aspects that have had an impact on its current sorry state. As can be seen in the pictures, the main portion of the building straddles the rail-bed. Staircases led down to platforms below the main concourse. Two wings extend out from the north side of the building on either side of the tracks, giving the station a "U" shape footprint. Much of the structure sits in the airspace over the railroad tracks. With transfer of the railroad property progressing from the New Haven to Penn Central and then to Amtrak when Conrail was formed ownership of the station itself has at times been unclear. Although Amtrak never owned the structure, recent court hearings revealed the fact that Amtrak asserts the right to review any demolition plans, citing a deed restriction placed on the property in 1972. Amtrak took complete ownership of the railroad right-of-way in 1976.

Another aspect of the site that has played into its fate is the fact that it spans the Pawtucket - Central Falls city line. Roughly about 1/3 of the building lies on the Central Falls side. When the station opened, it was heralded as a gift to the people of both cities. The station and related track improvements eliminated a dangerous grade crossing at Broad street and the site was chosen to please both city governments. Yet this fact has prevented either city from taking any action since the station closed, further compounding a situation of severe neglect. The station has been left to decay since the 1960's, with portions seeing some occasional use as a flea market and a pentecostal church. It also should be stated that it may likely be that had the station resided in one city or the other, it would be gone now.

Now to its current status. A developer now owns the site, and their plans, for a start, include building a CVS store on the north (Central Falls) side of the property. To make way for parking some of the building would have to be demolished, according to the developer. The developer had surveyors spray-paint the city line across the building as a guide for demolition. This came into play a day before the Pawtucket City Council was to vote on the Mayors plan to take possession of the building through eminent domain. The developer, clearly looking to change the facts on the ground before the vote obtained a demolition permit from the City of Central Falls and sent a demolition company to work on the northwest wing of the station. The City of Pawtucket obtained a court order for a temporary stay, but not until significant damage was done. The vote for eminent domain failed, and now the station sits in limbo, awaiting a possible settlement between the city and the developers, or further court hearings. The most recent news reports negotiation on the issue of creating parking spaces. Naturally, where to park the car? That is the burning issue of our time.

More details on the hearings can be found here: http://pads02860.org/
Also here: http://www.gcpvd.org/

All of this strikes me as another depressing case of a severe lack of vision. We live in a "use and discard" culture, and outside of the preservation community that attitude extends to buildings and even to trains and railroads themselves. The language in some of the newspaper stories reporting on this very issue reflects this, referring to the station as "a relic" and implying that demolition was "inevitable" merely because the building was old and neglected. All of this despite many physical examples to the contrary that exist right in our own community. The 18th century homes on Benefit Street, Saint Maria's Home on Governor Street, The Masonic Temple, all have fallen to decay and been revived. There are many others. Think of what a sad place Providence would be without them, something like Hartford. These buildings shouldn't be allowed to deteriorate to such dismal states, and they certainly shouldn't be helped to decay by the very people charged with their upkeep.

That is exactly what happened at the Gorham site. 33 buildings spread over 30 acres, it was seen by some as "impossible" to redevelop, just another white elephant under city care. Wasn't the Renaissance underway in 1994? Yes, so said the Mayor, and Yet-- The city, or at least a part of it, allowed a salvage company in to remove all of the metal widow frames from every building, exposing the interiors to the elements. Had the buildings been buttoned up and kept secure, a mere ten years later the developers would have been lining up to take over the property so they could put fancy signs on the roof and fancy tenants inside. In an ironic twist, the Stop and Shop built on the Gorham site is now closed, perhaps the city will fight to preserve that. More recently, the Silver Spring Dye Works came down to make way for a Home Depot, complete with fake bricked in round-top windows on its street side veneer. Silver Spring was a sad loss, done in both by the distraction over the fight to save Eagle Square and the lack of any sense that an over-heated Boston real estate market would spark a condo explosion in Providence a mere two years later. At this point, even if the train station is saved, and it should be, a great opportunity will still have been lost: that of a comprehensively redeveloped site featuring a T stop, a community center and retail shops that serve as a focal point for the community, as unique point of pride, and as a greater source of revenue and profit than any single CVS store will provide. It should be acknowledged that many people in the community and in the Pawtucket city government have been working very hard to realize such a plan. That fact makes it more than a shame that what we will get, at best, is yet another chain drug store (and parking lot) shoehorned uncomfortably against a Beaux Arts gem from another age.

Save the Pawtucket/Central Falls Train Station

The 1915 New Haven Railroad station on Broad Street is in serious danger of demolition. This would be a tragic loss, especially in light of the fact that the proposed development would come in the form of a CVS store. Do we need another? The train station is just one block from the Walgreens drug store that was built on the site of the historic Leroy theater. Does history have to repeat itself in this way? The train station should be restored as a working train station, connecting Central Falls and Pawtucket with the rest of the Northeast Corridor by rail once more. That is history worth repeating.

There is an important meeting December 6
Pawtucket City Council Meeting Wednesday, December 6, 2006 at 7:00 PM in Pawtucket City Hall.
For more info: http://www.pads02860.org

Car Culture Show at Hera Gallery


We have some work in "Car Culture" which runs through July 8 at the Hera Gallery, 327 Main St., Wakefield.
Hours: Wed.-Fri. 1-5 and Sat. 10-4. Phone: (401) 789- 1488.

The work gets a favorable mention in the Providence Journal review of June 15.

“Another standout is Erik Gould's 20 Roadside Memorials.
True to its title, Gould's piece consists of 20 black-and-white photographs of the makeshift memorials that have become such a familiar sight along America's roadways. Fortunately, Gould's understated style preserves the dignity and poignancy of these memorials, which range from simple crosses to elaborate shrines outfitted with everything from candles and flowers to jewelry and clothing.
FINALLY, A WORD about the show's juror.
He is Bart Parker, a well-known photographer and longtime URI professor who selected the show's 20-odd works from more than 100 submissions from around the country. As is customary with juried exhibits, Parker has written a "statement" that accompanies the exhibit. Visitors will find it hanging just inside the gallery's entrance.
Unlike most such statements, this one is at once engaging, intelligent and impassioned. It begins: "Personal leverage, this we love: the telephone, the computer, television, especially the car. We have gone above and beyond to succeed with this mobile shell, our second most expensive possession, our grand export. For cars, we have done great deeds, large and small." "

Also a nice note in The Phoenix review:
By: Bill Rodriguez
6/20/2006
"Even more imposing is the block of black-and-white photographs by Erik Gould, 20 Roadside Memorials. The four-by-five grid of horizontal images gives order to the aftermath of chaos: Teddy bears tied to a telephone pole, a victim’s favorite shirt, and many roadside crosses. The violence suggested there is shouted elsewhere."

Here is Bart’s excellent Juror Statement, in full:

Bart Parker
Car Culture

Personal leverage, this we love: the telephone, the computer, television, especially the car. We have gone above and beyond to succeed with this mobile shell, our second most expensive possession, our grand export. For cars, we have done great deeds, large and small. We opened war on Iraq and Hussein while the perpetrator of 9/11 rode away on a donkey. We thought it was fine for the Bush administration to secretly establish an energy policy composed by energy industry representatives chaperoned by an ex-energy executive. We forgave Exxon. The company never paid the Valdez fine. It has earned 5 billion dollars of interest on escrowed funds while the case stalled in court. We are ready to let the "Big Three" auto makers slide on pension and health care contracts, not to mention wages. They will move to China either way. China has become the factory floor for the world. The auto companies wonder. why are we still making cares here when it's cheaper there? As they haggle. BMW. Mercedes-Benz. Toyota and other foreign auto makers build new car factories here and refurbish whole state economies. We demolished the world's largest passenger rail hierarchy, from inter-urban, once connecting the Midwest along the baselines, to coast-to-coast, north-to-south trains of renown. At one time, you could ride from New York to Bangor, Maine, by switching from one trolley system to the next. Los Angeles had the largest municipal rail system in the world, the Big Red Cars. Oil, auto and sales folks got together and tore it up in order to make a market for cars.
Watts, inhabited by people who worked up in Beverly Hills and downtown, was left with no transit and no jobs to support the purchase of cars. Burn, burn. Watts never recovered. The Zurich, Switzerland, rail station departs 1000 passenger trains daily. White flight left the city in the new Buick to build the suburbs and exurbs and the strip malls, the most pitiful American architectural manifestation. These are eaten by Wal Mart. Vast regions of America are handcuffed to the car. Shoppers now drive as far as 100 miles to shop the big box, the last store standing, except for the car dealers. Wonder why Wal Mart does not sell cars. Before television there were drive-in movie theaters. Near Yuma are miles of RVs where retired workers live and increasingly, working families with two jobs. And two cars. In the center of the region is an intersection with a gas station on each of the four corners. Sunday mornings older men come to one station or another, fill up the tank, park buy a cup of coffee and watch people come and go at the pumps. They buy a paper and drive home. In the cities some people sleep in their cars. Others live in them.
The first draft for this commentary was written while riding in a car. The car replaced the push cart and many things are sold. delivered or catered from them. If trucking came to a standstill, people in the cities would run out of food. The "sexual revolution" rode a Ford into town. There are drive-by funeral homes. A man who knew his heart was buried in his Ferrari. Probably red. We have decided to insure our cars, but not our kids' health. There are huge State Highway Patrol departments and Motor Vehicle Divisions to mother our behavior behind our individual wheels. We maintain our highways, sort of, but are incensed at how much our schools cost. The auto makers do not contribute to highway construction or repair. They do spend billions on advertising. The latest hot selling point is power running boards on Miss Exurb's SUV so that she will not scuff her Blahniks when dismounting at the lawn party after jumping the curb to park on the grass. The only time the vehicle has ever been "off road."
We have earned our cars. And the huge repair bills that attend them, for cities as well as cars. The Big Dig is, after all, the bill for a city to put itself back together again following ill-advised highway construction.
Millions of drivers, two fingers on the wheel, cell phones irradiating their brains, seat belts off, tailgate past alone into the gridlock. Down goes the gas mileage. But we have decided that $3 a gallon gas is all right. Since China and India now compete for gas, the price of a gallon may not go down, but rise. Pay up.
Consider the agenda of organized religion, the lack of constitutional separation between business and government and our car fetish. The United States may not make to the Tercentenary.
Anyway, Smoking at the pump. Drinking and driving. Zoom zoom. See you in the left lane. It's All OK. Drive Safe...

Bart Parker
North Kingstown, Rhode Island, June 2, 2006

Providence Journal Review

The Providence Project gets some press in the Thursday April 20 Providence Journal. This piece is extracted from a story on the excellent photo show at Brown.

Art Scene by Bill Van Siclen April 20, 2006 Providence Journal

“New generation: Not that long ago, Providence could reasonably claim bragging rights as the photographic capital of New England. Two of the medium's giants, Aaron Siskind and Harry Callahan, lived in the city while teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design. They, in turn, served as a magnet for other talented photographers such as David Hanson and Henry Horenstein. Now a new generation of Providence photographers is emerging. And like Siskind and Callahan before them, they're using the city as both muse and subject. A case in point in Erik Gould, whose keen-eyed streetscapes and city scenes are currently on display at New Urban Arts. Gould, a staff photographer at the RISD Museum, obviously loves the city. Indeed, one of the pleasures of the show is trying to keep up with him as he rambles from neighborhood to neighborhood, recording everything from busy intersections to deserted construction sites. Gould is also something of an urban historian. In one of the show's most memorable pairings, a vintage photograph of Cathedral Square hangs above a contemporary shot of the same scene. The contrast between the old (busy, complex, pedestrian-friendly) and the new (dull, deserted and cut off from the life of the city) couldn't be more striking.”

full story here: http://www.projo.com/art/content/projo_20060420_artwrap20.1786a652.html

Show opening was great --

For all those who made it to the opening, Thank you all for making it a really great time, and for those that couldn’t make it, the show will be up until May 5, and we will have a special mini-reception next Thursday night from 5-8 for Gallery Night. Hope to see you there.