Dementia Concretia

Prairie Moon


Herman Rusch purchased the old Prairie Moon Dance Hall in Cochrane, Wisconsin, with the intent to stave away "old-age boredom" by turning it into a museum of oddities he'd collected. But in 1958, something in his interests shifted, and he began to make concrete and glass sculptures which included decorative arches and fences. So many "Outsider" and Naive artists begin late in life - as if they have finally shed the pressure of responsibilities and all this pent up light has to burst forth. When I first went to Prairie Moon, Rusch no longer lived on premises - he was in a nursing home nearby - and the residents refused to let people onto the grounds. If you lingered at the exterior walls too long, they would let the Dobermans out to scare you. But I recall being struck dumb by the golden cones, and the way the light danced off the glass. Prairie Moon is an exquisite example of dementia concretia, this impulse that takes over the elderly with this impulse to build, to make something iconic. And it is always from concrete, old bottles, and household junk. Detrius turned into beauty.

The Dickeyville Grotto
While most of the iconic examples are built by loners (Grandma Prisbey's Bottle Village in Simi Valley; Simon Rodia's Watts Towers), sometimes an entire community will come together. Such is the case with the Dickeyville Grotto. This exquisite Grotto was built by a community of immigrants in order to bring hope, and promise to them. Far from home, feeling uncomfortable and in unfamiliar ground, trying to assimilate, they built this ever expanding and complex religious structure from concrete, glass, and bits of pottery and religious icons they'd brought from home. It grounded them. When I saw this structure in 1983, I was overwhelmed with the intricacies of the mosaics. How could untrained eyes pull something together so beautifully? And in a group, no less. The energy of the place is oddly calming, despite how "busy" all the surfaces are.



The town of Phillips lies in the far northern reaches of Wisconsin. It is the home of Fred Smith's Wisconsin Concrete Park, out on Route 13. And this, this place, is without a doubt one of the two most impressive and moving examples of Outsider Art I've ever been to. The other one is Watts Towers.



Fred Smith was a lumberjack, who retired when he was in his 70s. That's when he began to build these statues - using chickenwire as an armature, he was more concerned with quantities than with workmanship. The entire park has been severely damaged twice by microbursts and rebuilt and restored. Fred built about 140 of these sculptures. Some are based on local people and incidents; others, like his version of the Chariot Race from the ORIGINAL, silent movie, Ben Hur, were based on popular culture. He kept building, and building, filling his acreage with objects. I can no longer find the photo I took of one grouping: it was four women, who reminded me so much of my grandmother and her three sisters - some aura about the grouping of Smith's silent women bespoke a strength of character that brooked no nonsense.

Their art matters to us. It matters to us because it is honest, without artifice, without a hidden agenda. It is the impulse that matters, the need to leave a lasting legacy. We recognize the purity of it, and, if we are blessed with eyes to see it, we recognize the beauty and grace of it as well.

I think about this work a lot - I think about it as I sit at my desk, in an office, with the air conditioner blowing and people just yammering away about nothing. I think about it because I ache to be making something myself and have not gotten back into it. The question I have danced around for the last twenty years is this: what has made me so afraid to paint and build objects that I stopped? What shut down? And how will it open up again, because it must open up. Art is in my heart, and I need to get it out into my hands again.

A Gap In The Space Between Life And Art

Robert Rauschenberg, a true 20th Century Master, died Monday May 12 at 82 years of age. The critic Robert Hughes once said that Rauschenberg "showed America that all of life could be open to art." Still, people fail to look, fail to see.

Rauschenberg used to say that he worked in the gap between life and art. I can say without question that his works fill that gap. There was a joy in his work, a playful seriousness that never failed to amaze me. Rest in peace, Mr. Rauschenberg.

Mission Accomplished, my ass

cross posted at The Fat Lady Sings

Sol LeWitt at Dia:Beacon

Wall Drawing #273: Lines to Points on a Grid

Sol LeWitt died earlier this month, and I somehow missed reading about it. And it saddens me as much, possibly more, than the death of Kurt Vonnegut. LeWitt was identified as a Minimalist, but that label really does an injustice to him, and his work.

I wish I could go to see this exhibit. I wish I could have participated in making the drawings. That was part of LeWitt's genius: his drawings were/are always made by other people based upon his written instructions. He teased. The instructions for Wall Drawing #273 are simple: Lines to Points on a Grid. No message as to how many lines, or how many points. No instructions as to the length of the lines, or the thickness. So if I were to make this drawing on one of the walls in my home, it would look quite different from the above image. But it would be connected to it as surely as if Mr. LeWitt were standing next to me telling me what to do.

LeWitt's wall paintings are both ephemeral and permanently linked to our past. His use of the wall harkens back to the earliest known cave paintings. Yet when the exhibit ends, the drawings will be painted over to make way for the next exhibit. They will no longer exist in the Dia:Beacon gallery. He understood humor, and resistance. To the comment "that's so easy a child could do it," he said yes, and made work available to several public schools in New York. Those drawings were made by children. He felt art was inaccessible due to high prices, so in the 70s he did a series of drawings (instructions) which he sold for about $10. Each.

Sol LeWitt died April 8, 2007. He was a mystic.

cross posted at The Fat Lady Sings